Bengal and Italy: Transcultural Encounters from the Mid-19th to the Early 21st Century [1 ed.] 9781032423043, 9781032423050, 9781003362173

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BENGAL AND ITALY

The ten chapters collected in this book manifest the current global interest in trans-border dialogues and trace the origins and development of Italian and Bengali internationalisms in the period from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. Despite having differing political statuses and lacking a shared geographical or historical space, Bengal and Italy remained uniquely connected and, at times, actively sought to transcend different kinds of constraints in their search for a significant dialogue and mutual enrichment in the fields of literature, music, architecture, art, cinema, diplomacy, entrepreneurship, travels, education and intellectual engagement. In this context, the volume confronts strategies of evaluation adopted by prominent representatives of the Bengali and Italian cultural environments with particular emphasis on readings embedded in the moment of contact. Both regions benefitted from this ‘elective affinity’ as they advanced along their respective paths towards a fuller awareness of their specific identity, and thus set a positive example of transcultural understanding which may inspire today’s world. Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, and has been the Director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, UK. She teaches Renaissance drama, women’s writing, sexuality and film studies. Her work in the School of Women’s Studies has focused on education and sexuality. Her edited book is Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India (2012) and co-edited books are Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas’ (2018) and Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ (2021). Mario Prayer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History of India at Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests focus on the political and cultural history of 20th-century Bengal, Indo-Italian relations in the inter-war period, Mahatma Gandhi’s reconstruction movement and the Panchayats in West Bengal. He is the author of The ‘Gandhians’ of Bengal: Nationalism, Social Reconstruction and Cultural Orientations 1920–1942 (2001) and has translated works by Rabindranath Tagore and Manik Bandopadhyay from the original Bengali into Italian.

Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature

This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Taking a comparative approach to literary studies, this series visits the relationship of literature and language alongside a variety of interdisciplinary and transnational topics. Titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics. Transformative Fictions World Literature and Personal Change Daniel Just Women Writing Trauma in the Global South A Study of Aminatta Forna, Isabel Allende and Anuradha Roy Annemarie Pabel A Cosmopolitan Approach to Literature Against Origins and Destinations Didier Coste Reclaiming Karbala Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims (1860s–1940s) Epsita Halder Modern American Literature and Contemporary Iranian Cinema Identity, Appropriation, and Recontextualization Morteza Yazdanjoo Bengal and Italy Transcultural Encounters from the Mid-19th to the Early 21st Century Edited by Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studiesin-Comparative-Literature/book-series/RSCOL

Bengal and Italy Transcultural Encounters from the Mid-19th to the Early 21st Century Edited by Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chakravarti, Paromita, editor. | Prayer, Mario, 1961– editor. Title: Bengal and Italy : transcultural encounters from the mid-19th to the early 21st century / edited by Paromita Chakravarti & Mario Prayer. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge studies in comparative literature | Collection of essays by Sukanta Chaudhuri and 9 others. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: Encounters in words and sounds : Literature, Music, Performance—Encounters in shapes and images : Architecture, Art, Cinema—Encounters through experience : Business, Travel, Politics. Identifiers: LCCN 2023002522 (print) | LCCN 2023002523 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032423043 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032423050 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003362173 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: India—Relations—Italy. | Italy—Relations—India. Classification: LCC DS450.I8 B46 2023 (print) | LCC DS450.I8 (ebook) | DDC 327.54045—dc23/eng/20230127 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002522 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002523 ISBN: 978-1-032-42304-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-42305-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36217-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgementsviii About the Contributors x

Introduction1 PAROMITA CHAKRAVARTI AND MARIO PRAYER

PART 1

Encounters in Words and Sounds: Literature, Music, Performance17   1 From Dante to Rabindranath: An Unfolding Renaissance

19

SUKANTA CHAUDHURI

  2 Rabindranath Tagore as Reflected in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers

40

LUISA PRAYER

  3 Translating Cultures: Italian Dramatists on the Bangla Stage

59

PAROMITA CHAKRAVARTI

PART 2

Encounters in Shapes and Images: Architecture, Art, Cinema83   4 Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta and the Case of Bengali Domestic Residences MONOLINA BHATTACHARYYA

85

vi  Contents   5 The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta: The Contribution of Olinto Ghilardi and Sashi Hesh in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

106

RITUPARNA BASU

  6 Before Neorealism, After Commedia: Tracing an Aesthetic Décalage

126

TRINANKUR BANERJEE

PART 3

Encounters Through Experience: Business, Travel, Politics143   7 Italy and the Discovery of India: The Early Phase of Italian Foreign Policy in Bengal (1849–1936)

145

MARZIA CASOLARI

  8 “The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . . only deals in trade”: Italian Traders in Bengal 1850–1950 ca.

164

ANTONELLA VIOLA

  9 Travels in Italy: Bengali Writings in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

181

SANJUKTA DAS GUPTA

10 Emissaries of Swadeshi: Bengali Internationalists in Inter-war Italy

202

MARIO PRAYER

Postscript225 11 The Continuing Cultural Exchanges Between Italy and Bengal: Interview of Consul General Dr Gianluca Rubagotti With the Editors of the Volume

227

Index231

Illustrations

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 11.1

Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro65 Sher Afghan 67 Hochhe ta Ki 69 Mrityu na Hatya?73 Vama (Ulrike Meinhof)79 Government House, Calcutta 89 Marble Palace, north-facing view 94 Jorasanko Thakurbati 100 Olinto Ghilardi. Untitled, 1896 116 Olinto Ghilardi. Untitled, ca. 1890 117 Sashi Kumar Hesh. Pandit Shibnath Shastri 121 Bengal-Italy mobile photo exhibition in Kolkata tramcar 228

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of a cooperation agreement signed in 2017 between the Department of English at Jadavpur University of Kolkata and the Department “Italian Institute of Oriental Studies – ISO” at Sapienza University of Rome. Under this agreement, a research project on the Bengal-Italy cultural intercourse project was funded by Sapienza as part of the activities of its Area for Internationalization. It entailed faculty exchanges, seminars, interaction with PhD and graduate students and round tables at both partner institutions in the period between 2017 and 2019. On those occasions, the idea was tabled to explore the possibility of organizing a collection of chapters involving different authors from various fields of research which might provide wide-ranging documentation of the multifaceted interaction between Bengal and Italy from the late 19th century to the present. This idea was very favourably received by colleagues in different parts of the world, and despite a temporary setback imposed by the pandemic over the last couple of years, we have been able to finalize the project and present it to Routledge Publishers. The response from them was, again, very positive and we would like to thank the editorial staff, particularly Jennifer Abbot and Anita Bhatt, for their kind and ready support during the various stages of preparation of this publication. We would like to thank all our colleagues who have made this enterprise possible. Prof Sanjukta Das Gupta of Sapienza University was a source of inspiration, providing constant support and useful suggestions throughout the period of elaboration of the book, and deserves our very special thanks. We would also like to thank the directors of our Departments, Professor Matilde Mastrangelo (Head of Department ISO, Sapienza University) and Professor Nandini Saha (Head of Department of English, Jadavpur University) for providing institutional backing over the years, along with the Jadavpur Vice-Chancellor Professor Suranjan Das and the Joint Registrar Dr Sanjay Gopal Sarkar, and Dr Maria Ester Scarano, head of the Sapienza Area for Internationalization, and Dr Giovanni Maria Vianello and Dr Hamid Misk, respectively, Head and Officer of the International

Acknowledgements ix Agreements Service. The Library of Oriental Studies at Sapienza, the Central National Library of Rome and the National Library and Natya Shodh Library in Kolkata have been reference points in our search for sources and their staff made our work easier and more pleasant through their invaluable help. Finally, our gratitude goes to the consul general of Italy, Dr  Gianluca Rubagotti, for assisting our project in several ways and taking a few interesting initiatives in connection with the Bengal-Italy intercourse. The Editors

About the Contributors

Trinankur Banerjee is a PhD candidate in the Department of Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara. He works on Bengali comedy to understand the intimate dimensions of post-Partition socius and how comedy helps rethink questions of stardom, aural cultures, and historiography of Indian cinema at large. He has published in Film Quarterly, IIC Quarterly and Indian Film Culture. He is currently co-editing the special issue (Spring 2023) of Media Fields on ‘Media mutualities’. Rituparna Basu is Associate Professor of History at Bijoy Krishna Girls’ College, Howrah (West Bengal). She did her PhD in history from Calcutta University and was Fulbright-Nehru Post-Doctoral Fellow at Philadelphia Museum of Art and a visiting scholar at South Asia Centre, University of Pennsylvania. She has participated in conferences and published in national and international journals. Her area of interest is cultural history of Bengal, history of art, folk arts, collections and museums. Monolina Bhattacharyya is Fulbright Scholar and Research Associate at the Global South Asia section of the Department of Art and Culture, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. She obtained her PhD in South Asian art and architecture from the University of Minnesota. Her work primarily focuses on the socio-cultural negotiations between the architecture of colonial India and its indigenous population, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century Calcutta. Her research also addresses issues of sustainability in the popular culture of Bengal. Marzia Casolari is Associate Professor of Asian History at the University of Turin. She has done extensive research and regularly writes on Indian and South Asian contemporary history and politics. Her research interests are Indian radical and revolutionary nationalism and its international dimension, as well as the international dimension of fascism. At present, she is carrying out a research on the geopolitical and strategic

About the Contributors xi implications of India’s Partition. With Routledge, she has published In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism (2020). Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, and has been the director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, UK. She teaches Renaissance drama, women’s writing, sexuality and film studies. Her work in the School of Women’s Studies has focused on education and sexuality. Her edited book is Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India (2012) and co-edited books are Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas’ (2018) and Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ (2021). Sukanta Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, where he founded the School of Cultural Texts and Records. His core field of research is the European and English Renaissance. His recent publications include the Third Arden edition of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2017) and Things Reborn: Essays on the Renaissance (2022); also The Metaphysics of Text (2010), The Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore (edited, 2020) and Global Debates in the Digital Humanities (co-edited, 2022). He was chief coordinator of Bichitra, the Tagore online variorum. Sanjukta Das Gupta is Associate Professor of Indian History at the Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome. Her publications focus on the agrarian and environmental history of colonial India, the social history of marginalized communities and travel writings. She is the author of Adivasis and the Raj: Socio-economic Transition of the Hos, 1820–1932 (2011). Her recent co-edited volumes include Subjects, Citizens, and Law: Colonial and Postcolonial India (2017), In Quest of the Historian’s Craft: Essays in Honour of Professor B.B. Chaudhuri (2018), and Narratives from the Margins: Aspects of Adivasi History in India (2019). Luisa Prayer is Professor of Chamber Music at the ‘Giuseppe Verdi’ Conservatory, Milan. As a concert pianist, she has toured in Europe, Japan, China and the US and has made recordings and radio broadcasting in Italy, France, Austria, Taiwan and the US. A researcher and interpreter of music by women composers and of 20th-century Italian music, she has co-edited Alfredo Casella interprete del suo tempo (2021). She graduated at St Cecilia National Academy in Rome and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

xii  About the Contributors Mario Prayer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History of India at Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests focus on the political and cultural history of 20th-century Bengal, Indo-Italian relations in the inter-war period, Mahatma Gandhi’s reconstruction movement and the Panchayats in West Bengal. He is the author of The ‘Gandhians’ of Bengal: Nationalism, Social Reconstruction and Cultural Orientations 1920–1942 (2001) and has translated works by Rabindranath Tagore and Manik Bandopadhyay from the original Bengali into Italian. Antonella Viola holds a PhD degree in History from the European University Institute and is currently a member of Centro de Humanidades (CHAM) in Lisbon. She has extensively worked on Italian entrepreneurial presence in British India. Her publications on this topic include several articles and essays. More recently she has investigated the activities of Florentine merchants and the commercial ambitions of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the 17th century.

Introduction Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer

And through Arabic the name of Venice has travelled far afield, to Persia and parts of India, where to this day guns are known as bundook – which is, of course, none other than ‘Venice’ or ‘Venetian’! It sometimes happens that the circuitry of the brain establishes a connection that creates a jolt like an electric shock. That was what happened to me at this point in Cinta’s talk. Was it possible that I had completely misunderstood the name ‘Bonduki sadagar’? Could it be that its meaning was not ‘The Gun Merchant’, as I had thought, but rather, ‘The Merchant who went to Venice’? (Ghosh 2019, 137)

In this paragraph from Amitav Ghosh’s 2019 novel The Gun Island, the Bengali protagonist, Deenanath, is shocked into a momentous discovery of the historic, philological, cultural and trade connections between 17th-century Bengal and Italy when his mentor and friend, the half-Italian historian, Cinta, reveals the etymology of the name of Venice in a lecture. Tracing the name to the German and Swedish Venedig derived from the Byzantine name for the city Banadiq, she points out that in Arabic, it became al-Bunduqeyya which is what Venice is still called in that language. Her surmise that the word bunduqeyya meaning guns and bullets could be traced back to the foundries in the Venetian Jewish ghetto made these articles start a train of thought in Deenanath’s mind. He realizes that the Bonduki sadagar referred to in the medieval Bengali epic poems (mangalkavyas) that he had read and assumed to be a gun merchant could actually have been a trader who had travelled to Venice. This epiphanic understanding opens up new lines of enquiry in his quest to understand a 17th-century Bangla mangalkavya about Manasa, a snake goddess, the travails of a sadagar (merchant) and a shrine that he built in her honour in the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests in the Bengal estuary. A  complex tale of travel, trade and adventure over vast stretches of time and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-1

2  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer space then unfolds from the chance linguistic connection, linking the two unlikely regions of Italy and Bengal. It is interesting that this global novel which unearths centuries of forgotten interconnections between cultures and peoples, across histories and geographies, facilitated through languages and culture, trade and migrations, carried forward through the more distressing phenomena of climate change and human trafficking should locate the epicentre of these transnational exchanges in the connections between Bengal and Italy. Our book, Bengal and Italy: Transcultural Encounters from the Mid-19th to the Early 21st Century, is sited precisely in this terrain and seeks to conduct an academic examination of a little-known history and a present of a complex and continuing relationship. About this book This multi-sided enquiry locates itself beyond the physical and conceptual boundaries of nation and state by unravelling stories of translation, transfer and self-transformation which characterized the rich intercourse between two non-contiguous regions. Bengal and Italy, two regions of East and West, are apparently unconnected through either geographical or historical continuities. Bengal, a British colony until 1947, was partitioned between the Indian Union on one side, and East Pakistan on the other (becoming independent as Bangladesh in 1971), whereas Italy hosted a mosaic of kingdoms and acquired political unity only after 1861. Yet Bengalis and Italians engaged in a constructive conversation in various fields, often overcoming considerable constraints of various kinds. Each area having inherited a central role as epicentres of expansive cultural movements in their respective continental regions and beyond, they were both inspired to search for mutual enrichment in a free, non-hegemonic fashion. This kind of ‘elective affinity’ sets a valuable example of transcultural dialogue which may inspire today’s disjointed world and underlines the interconnectedness of peoples and countries – even if such interconnection may not always be apparent. The book aims to demonstrate this through an analysis of an almost two-century-long engagement in the fields of literature, art, cinema, travel, entrepreneurship, diplomacy, political ideology and intellectual history. While India and Europe have a long history of cultural and commercial relations going back to ancient times, the period under review (from the mid-19th to the early 21st century) is particularly significant on various counts. In the 19th century, Italy’s struggle for unification offered Bengali patriots and nationalist leaders useful ideas and strategies of colonial resistance. Bengalis were depicted by them as ‘the Italians of Asia’ and encouraged to follow the examples set by Mazzini and the Risorgimento, while revolutionary societies were formed in Bengal, modelled on the Italian

Introduction 3 Carboneria. After the Italian national unification in 1861, Bengal also acquired special significance in Italy when India as a British colony, with Calcutta as its centre, was acquiring greater international prominence. As such it drew the attention of Italian policy makers and economic analysts, as well as of individual entrepreneurs. Bengali interest in Italian politics continued well after the 1905–08 Swadeshi movement and World War I  with the rise of Mussolini’s Italy. The organizational model of Italy’s fascist state influenced a section of Indian political scientists and activists. In the same period, the Italian civil society debated the Indian national movement including its large Bengali leadership. This dialogue continued after World War II with cinema and theatre, providing important fields of interaction (further details are given below in this Introduction). Defining the field The Bengal-Italy encounter represents a very specific kind of transnational exchange which cannot be simply subsumed under the general rubric of Europe-South Asia cultural traffic. It requires a more nuanced critical framework which is sensitive to the particular histories of these two regions and their unique interactions. This calls for evolving a theoretical framework which is appropriate for the understanding of these exchanges. It would, however, prove counterproductive to impose a methodological or theoretical uniformity over studies belonging to different disciplinary fields, dealing with issues spanning almost two centuries and covering disparate areas of human activity from politics to art and architecture, from literature to economics and from foreign relations to music. Moreover, while the study of the past necessarily involves a search for broad definitions and meanings, it is also necessary to highlight the unique, often unpredictable individual choices that are an integral part of human creativity – to borrow Rabindranath Tagore’s words, the human mind is, like art, “a solitary pedestrian, who walks alone among the multitude, continually assimilating various experiences, unclassifiable and uncatalogued” (Tagore 1926, 11). What is required is, in other words, the connection between context and text. A multi-disciplinary approach can thus better reflect the variety in the object of study than an inter-disciplinary effort searching for common grounds among different perspectives. The chapters of this book pose questions and follow enquiry patterns that are thought by their authors as the most suitable to the issues they deal with. Yet, as scholars reflecting on the meaning of historical experience, we do take a stance on certain issues of definition and theorization. Reaching out beyond the modernist framework of the nation has resulted, in recent years, in a multiplicity of methodological and theoretical approaches generally emphasizing the wider dimension of communication,

4  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer trade and travel across oceans and continents and conjuring up interconnected histories. The ensuing debate has often focused on the search for a meaningful definition of such exchanges, whereby certain terms have acquired hermeneutical prominence. The idea of ‘supra-local’ pushed by decades of globalization and neo-liberalism has been variously related to notions like international, transnational or cosmopolitan. These terms have at times been contrasted with each other based on different analytical premises.1 In a sense, cosmopolitanism, nationalism or internationalism can be considered possibilities or responses to specific historical developments. Other ideas and plans were also at work in the period under study – universalism, world-citizenship, federation drives within a reconstructed British Empire or movements for a new world order. All such approaches and aims may be better understood as coexisting and intermingling rather than mutually exclusive categories. The synthesis was found in individual solutions which are then better understood with reference to their specific contents and contexts. It is important, therefore, not to allow definitional abstractions to obscure the variable common sense, local morals and socially embedded frameworks of meaning that are found in communities and individuals as the everchanging subjects of history over time and space. We consider the Bengal-Italy engagement to be a form of transcultural encounter, a definition that seems to best represent the starting point in our analysis. According to our understanding, the prefix trans- points to the act of crossing the border of one’s home and creatively establishing a new bilateral or multilateral identity or character ‘beyond’ or ‘larger than’ the pre-existing one, within a space that is constituted by the meeting of host and guest. In this sense, every intercourse between different cultural environments requires a ‘translation’, a ‘bringing beyond’ of content in the original language in order to create new forms of expression that were previously absent both at the giver’s end and at the receiver’s end. Seen in this way, ‘trans-’ differs from ‘inter-’ whenever the latter is meant to represent a shared middle space where both sides carry on their respective identity and engage in a dialogue for mutual enrichment based on comparison and differentiation, whose results are then carried back home and elaborated. Further, we have identified culture as the realm where this ‘bringing beyond’ takes place. This is not meant as a merely verbal substitute for ‘nation’ or other forms of fixed identity. By ‘culture’ we mean to refer to regional heritages in the plural, that is, a diverse set of values and meanings that variously combine to provide a context for the expression of a community and its inner components. Borrowing Benessaieh’s (2010) notion of ‘transculturality’, it may be argued that each culture is a composite, internally evolving entity which in turn relates to other cultures in a general process of change. While it can be assumed that this general dimension

Introduction 5 does not necessarily refer to processes of cultural imposition fostered by Europe’s colonial supremacy as in Ortiz’s notion of ‘transculturation’ (Ortiz 1995), the Bengal-Italy intercourse provides an interesting example of how even the colonial period witnessed a continuity in the free dialogue between regions in Europe and Asia. Both Bengal and Italy may be seen as transcultural entities, with respective historical legacies of centuries-long openness across borders, over the seas and beyond mountain ranges, meeting in a joint venture of cooperation divested of hegemonic aims or power equations, in a mutually transformative relationship of giving and taking. While the notion of ‘transcultural’ has acquired different meanings in relation, for instance, to social sciences, literature or philosophy (Pettersson 2008), in the context of the Bengal-Italy encounter it represents the great variety of situations resulting from carrying over the original elements to a distant environment where such elements are creatively reshaped on both sides of the exchange. ‘Culture’ thus refers to Italy and Bengal as travelling images, both self-represented and perceived from the outside, not as fixed canons but rather as multi-sided complexes, creating historical realities whose specific configuration is revealed in the moment of exchange. There is, consequently, a fundamental role played by individual initiative and elaboration as highlighted by the term encounter. History cannot be seen as the mere result of cultural contexts intersecting and influencing each other. The essential intervention of single actors, as the present collection amply proves, ensures the unique character of the experiences which take place at different points of time, within selected areas of social or intellectual worlds. The individual acquires prominence as an interpreter and a negotiator between his own cultural world and that of destination. They induce changes in the self-representation of the culture they belong to, and in its intercourse with the one where they are hosted. This multi-layered ‘translation’ involves a process of adjustment and adaptation between the imagined and the experienced where transmitted ideas and images may precede the actual intercourse, determine its nature, as well as be redetermined and reshaped by it. Tracing this personal element may help bring out the text and context of transculturality away from the pitfalls of preconstituted, one-sided frameworks such as the national and the global. The ‘encounters’ between Bengalis and Italians were, in a sense, one-off feats, and at the same time, they delineated shared horizons of meanings which might spur waves and movements and prompt ever-new enterprises in translation and testimony. Based on these premises, the perspective of transcultural encounter provides scope for a variety of scholarly enquiries. Bengali architects and literati feeling a need to confront the legacy of Italian Renaissance, Italian entrepreneurs finding their way to Calcutta, and government departments exploring avenues of entente, these are just examples of the wide range

6  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer of expectations, experiences and projects that bound together the lives of people belonging to these two unique regions of the world. The known part of the story Scholarly enquiry in the Bengal-Italy intercourse has so far covered specific episodes during the 19th and 20th centuries, often as part of biographical essays or of more general studies of cultural and political relations between India and other countries.2 These episodes, which mainly belong to the Bengal’s side of the intercourse, have been repeatedly referred to in literature and have thus become recurrent topoi. We are now familiar with expressions of early-19th-century interest in Italy of Rammohan Roy and Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, two pioneers of Bengal’s integration with the contemporary world. In 1821, Roy lamented the repression of the Neapolitan constitutionalist insurgency by Austrian troops in a letter to J.S. Buckingham, the editor of the Calcutta Journal: From the late unhappy news, I am obliged to conclude that I shall not live to see liberty universally restored to the nations of Europe, and Asiatic nations, especially those that are European colonies, possessed of a greater degree of the same blessing than what they now enjoyed. Under these circumstances I consider the cause of the Neapolitans as my own and their enemies as ours. Enemies to liberty and friends of despotism have never been and never will be ultimately successful. (Roy 1900, 74) Here is an early demonstration of a cosmopolitan attitude in defence of subjected nationalities in various countries in Europe, South America and Asia. The perception of a Bengal-Italy companionship of souls was also represented in poetical form. In a lyrical, Byronian vein, H.L.V. Derozio wrote an ode, Italy (1827), in which he implicitly drew a parallel between Italy, a once-glorious country now lying in desolation, and India: Oh! How I  long to look upon thy face, / Land of the Lover and the Poet! – Thou / I’ve ever deemed must be a pleasant place / To them who at the shrine of ages bow, / Adoring every relic of the past. / . . . E’en now in desolation as thou art, / And as the shadow of what once thou wast, / There is no land beneath the sun like thee, / . . . Oh! thou delightful land! Sweet sunny Italy! (Derozio 1923, 46) About four decades later, Michael Madhusudan Dutt presented the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, with a sonnet dedicated to Dante Alighieri, ‘a

Introduction 7 little Oriental flower’ in the garland that would be laid at the poet’s tomb on his sixth centenary. And in February 1925, on the eve of his return to India, an ill Rabindranath Tagore penned an ode named To Italia. In this sort of imaginative, cameo-like sketch, the poet, a pilgrim ‘from the eastern shore’, promised to visit the ‘Queen’ again in the near future under more auspicious circumstances: I said to thee: ‘O Queen, / I have brought my reed from the eastern shore / Waiting to play to the light of thy dark eyes, / open to me thy veil.’ / Thou saidst in answer: ‘Go back, my impatient poet, / For I have not yet decked myself in colours. / In the sweet month of May, / When I sit on my flower throne, I shall ask thee to my side.’ / . . . I shall seek back my path to thy window / On some sunny day, drunken with the fragrance of roses and murmuring with bees’ wings. / Today, while I take my leave and go back, I sing: / Victory to thee! (Tagore 1925, 11) If Bengal’s literary world turned its poetic imagination towards Italy from time to time, the more political element was not missing either and came prominently to the fore around the latter part of the 19th century. Once again, we see Bengal and Italy teaming up in a common effort to bring about a cultural and political renaissance in their respective continents. While Bankim Chandra Chatterjee depicted Bengalis as the “Italians of Asia” (Bagal 1969, 124), the success of Italy’s struggle for national independence and unification in 1861 prompted Bengali intellectuals’ admiration for the heroes of Risorgimento. Mazzini’s and Garibaldi’s biographies were serialized in the 1860s by Jogendranath Vidyabhushan in the monthly Aryadarshan (Raychaudhuri 1988, 14). Surendranath Banerjea often referred to Italy in his public speeches. In 1876, he devoted a long address to Giuseppe Mazzini, while on another occasion and in 1878, he urged the Indian youth to emulate the “immortal apostles of Italian unity”: he said, in part, The cause of Italian unity had its apostles and prophets, its Garibaldi and its Mazzinis. Who will be the Garibaldi and Mazzini of Indian unity? Who amongst us will emulate their self-sacrifice, their matchless patriotism, their unflinching devotion to the interest of their country? (Palit 1894, 120) The Italian Risorgimento was also a significant reference for Bengal’s extremist group, including Aurobindo Ghosh and Bipin Chandra Pal, as well as for the biplabi societies taking the cue from Italian Carboneria (Fasana 1984).

8  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer The most researched episode is, however, Rabindranath’s controversial visits to Italy in 1925, on the invitation by a group of “friends”, and in 1926 as a state guest.3 Even apart from a large number of biographical accounts, a series of dedicated studies spanning several decades has provided a minutely detailed picture of how those visits unfolded and were debated in Europe and Bengal at the time.4 The overall understanding has gradually changed, from a stark juxtaposition between the somewhat naïve Indian poet and the sly propaganda machinery of the fascist dictatorship, to a more nuanced and complex evaluation of the reasons behind Tagore’s ‘genuine love’ for Italy and her people. Tagore was also grateful to Mussolini’s government for the support it had extended to Visva-Bharati University. In a period when anti-fascist forces were on a red alert over the continent, Tagore looked at Europe’s political right and left from a detached viewpoint and often found it hard to keep addressing issues of universal relevance – peace, cooperation among the countries and rejection of aggressive nationalism – without becoming a target for both criticism and appropriation. Mussolini’s newly established regime found it convenient, on its part, to try and use Tagore to improve its own reputation by projecting him as a friend of ‘new’ Italy. Tagore had, in fact, acquired vast popularity in Italy since the first Italian version of Gitanjali came out in 1914 which inaugurated a steady production of translation works over the following twenty-five years. By the mid-1920s, he had become a household name. During the 1926 visit, the fascist press was mobilized in the display of Tagore’s friendly attitude on several occasions when Mussolini (whom Tagore met twice) and other prominent government officers attended his lectures. This was by all means a political operation. Even then, despite the dislike expressed in certain quarters for the anti-nationalist tone of Tagore’s address in Milan in 1925, it might be argued that the fascist regime did not try to force its ideology on Tagore and only valued his status as a worldrenown Oriental poet. The Italian government, however, was keen on establishing a channel of dialogue with Bengali intellectuals throughout the 1930s. Prominent figures, including Subhas Chandra Bose, Tarak Nath Das and Benoy Kumar Sarkar, were offered help in their study of the political philosophy of fascism and the organization of the fascist state.5 Along with them, a group of young students and patriots – Amiyanath Sarkar (historian Jadunath Sarkar’s nephew), Amiya Chakravarty (a poet and scholar who was then Tagore’s secretary), Pramatha Nath Roy and Monindra Mohan Moulik (formerly Giuseppe Tucci’s and Benoy Sarkar’s students) among them – spent time in Italy and contributed with their writings to the Italian government’s project of tying up with the future leadership of independent India.

Introduction 9 Benoy Sarkar’s case was particularly significant (Flora 1994; Sen 2015). An Indian revolutionary operating from the US before World War I, Sarkar later turned to social sciences as a more effective instrument of India’s cultural and political emancipation. He engaged in an in-depth study of the new political philosophies of the contemporary world and considered the fascist State as a suitable example for India on account of the similarities between the two countries in social composition, economic conditions and cultural outlook. While in Italy, he was provided with facilities to study at close quarters the working of various institutions of social and economic importance and access policy documents and programmatic statements in the Italian original. This led him to somewhat distance himself from his previous democratic inclination as he invited his countrymen to draw useful lessons from current world affairs. During World War II, Italy extended support to initiatives aimed at constituting free Indian armies, first the Azad Hind Fauj and then the Indian National Army, although the major role in this respect was played by its more resourceful allies Germany and Japan.6 Mussolini believed that a joint declaration supporting the independence of Arab and Asian countries under French and British colonial rule would have a positive impact on the evolution of the war. Even if Germany ultimately refused to endorse such a move, Mussolini still hoped, as late as February 1944, that Subhas Chandra Bose (whom he had met a few times in Rome in 1934–36) might ignite a revolt in India and turn the course of the war in the Axis’s favour. India’s attainment of independence meant a centralization of foreign relations in the hand of the state, which might have partly impaired the BengalItaly intercourse. Italy, on its part, had to face the constraints of Cold War alignments and generally lost a degree of autonomy in its contacts with Asian countries (Spagnulo 2020). On the other hand, progress in travel and communication technologies made access to the cultural life of distant regions easier. This period has so far been only marginally researched, but evidence points to a new flow of ideas and creative models in various fields, particularly in cinema and literature, with the Italian presence making itself conspicuous in Bengal more often than vice versa. Consider, for example, the masters of Neorealismo and their influence on their counterparts in Bengali cinema, the literary explorations of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the vast popularity of Maria Montessori’s educational methods, or the impact of Gramsci’s thought on Bengali leftist intellectuals. In various ways, elements of Italian cultural life found their way to Bengal, where the Italian interest, as briefly illustrated in this section, can now claim more than two centuries of uninterrupted history.

10  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer An outline of chapters The chapters collected here represent, in their disciplinary and thematic heterogeneity, the wide range of historical events, ideas, projects and representations that have made the intercourse between Bengalis and Italians a lively and in some respects surprising experience. The contributions from scholars of different fields explore a multiplicity of sources, from archival materials to architectural evidence and from literary and musical compositions to paintings and movies, offering a polyphonic assembly of voices belonging to disparate regions in the kingdom of culture. These studies offer a fresh look at established themes and bring new ones into focus, thereby substantially enriching our understanding. They have been grouped together into three sections corresponding to three major modalities of encounter. They are bracketed by Introduction – which sets out the terrain of the book and its theoretical concerns – and Postscript – which marks new directions in the Italy-Bengal relationships by charting out some of the most current diplomatic and cultural encounters facilitated by the Italian consul general in Kolkata. The first section, Encounters in Words and Sounds: Literature, Music, Performance, presents three studies exploring subsequent phases in the Bengal-Italy literary dialogue. Sukanta Chaudhuri explores the variety of European models which were consciously adopted by Bengali Renaissance writers of the 19th century, and the specific role played by the Italian Renaissance in that respect. Dante, Petrarca and Tasso on one side, Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Debendranath Sen and Rabindranath Tagore on the other, are among the protagonists of a dialogue across centuries, continents and languages. Sukanta Chaudhuri argues that beyond the transmission of stylistic and thematic elements, Dante and Italian Renaissance writers set an example which helped their later Bengali counterparts to evolve their own cultural identity paradigm. Thus, despite the growing literary and academic influence of English language and culture, the Italian Renaissance remains a significant element in Bengali creative literature. Paromita Chakravarti’s chapter draws attention to the Italian influence on Bengali drama, especially since the mid-20th century. Despite a strong indigenous tradition of folk theatre in Bengal, modern Bengali drama since its inception in 19th-century colonial Kolkata, has consistently drawn inspiration from, translated and adapted Western plays by Shakespeare, Congreve, Sheridan, Molière and others. In the 1950s, anti-fascist progressive writers, dramatists and artists started a politically conscious, Left-sympathizing people’s theatre movement (also known as group theatre) which deployed Bengali adaptations of the plays of international dramatists. Among them, Italian playwrights like Luigi Pirandello, Dario Fo, Franca Rame and Ugo

Introduction 11 Betti were particularly popular. The chapter focuses on how Bengali group theatre has drawn from the formal experimentation, innovative production and the often radical politics of 20th-century Italian drama. In doing so, these plays set up a dialogue between Italian and Bengali cultures, helping us to understand both their specificities and commonalities. Luisa Prayer provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the influence exerted by Rabindranath Tagore’s poems on some well-known Italian composers in the first half of the 20th century, including Franco Alfano, Alfredo Casella and Ottorino Respighi. To them, Tagore acquired special relevance on account, on one side, of the ongoing search for new meanings and art forms in contemporary Europe, and on the other, of the widespread interest in ancient Indian literature, as well as the individual inclination towards philosophy and religion in times of crisis. Tagore thus emerges as a catalyst for a wider popularization of Indian culture in the West in that period. The second section, Encounters in Shapes and Images: Architecture, Art, Cinema, brings the discussion to the field of figurative art. Monolina Bhattacharyya in her study of domestic residences in 19th-century Bengal argues that structural elements, materials and decorative motifs of Neoclassical and Italian Renaissance architecture were selectively adopted and adapted by private owners in Calcutta wishing to emulate the grandeur of imperial buildings and thus establish their social ascendancy. Her detailed description of the Marble Palace and other buildings shows that a negotiation between architectural styles and cultural spaces – the exterior for public view and the interior for private rituals and family life – was at work in the mansions of Calcutta’s ambitious entrepreneurs. Through an analysis of these architectural styles of affluent Bengali residences, the chapter traces the inspiration of Italy’s Renaissance and Baroque structures. Rituparna Basu discusses the unique role played by Italian painter Olinto Ghilardi in the artistic ambience of Calcutta in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As vice-principal of the influential Calcutta School of Art, he operated at the crucial time juncture when the taste for European painting was confronted by the rising trend of Indianization of the arts in the early phase of the Swadeshi movement. Through his teachings and artworks, he was able to influence young artists of both currents, notably among them Sashi Kumar Hesh and Abanindranath Tagore, and took the initiative of providing Italian government scholarships for talented students willing to study art in Italy. Rituparna Basu thus shows that Ghilardi was in many ways an important figure in the art history of Bengal, combining the lasting interest in the techniques and sensibility of European art with the spirit of Swadeshi and the search for new Indian models. Trinankur Banerjee brings into focus another popular medium of art transmission, that is, cinema. In his study of the transnational influences of

12  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer Italian cinema and their reception in Bengal, he rejects the static reading of a monolithic relationship between Bengali cinema and Italian Neorealism, and adopts the concept of décalage in order to show that influential Bengali film directors of the 1960s were aware of a variety of contemporary developments and incorporated these into their works. The argument is illustrated by situating Mario Camerini’s Il Signor Max and Mrinal Sen’s Akash Kusum within the genealogy of commedia all’italiana. The third and last section, Encounters Through Experience: Business, Travel, Politics, contains four chapters which illustrate the perceptions, experiences and ideologies of Italian and Bengali traders, travellers, intellectuals and students visiting each other’s countries during the British colonial rule. Marzia Casolari takes a long-term view of Italy’s foreign policy towards India and highlights the central role played by Bengal in it. In the early decades after 1861, she argues, India was gradually ‘discovered’ by Italian policy makers and seen as a potential ‘gateway of Asia’ for trading companies, yet it largely remained a secondary focus in the broader perspective of Italy’s colonial interests in Africa and the near East. After World War I  and the rise of fascism, India gradually became a self-standing policy target. Cultural ties were used as a means to promote economic and political collaboration, especially among Bengali intellectual and political élites through the initiatives of indologist Giuseppe Tucci and Gino Scarpa, an Italian diplomat. A group of Italy supporters was thus formed who variously helped in countering anti-Italy propaganda in India, for instance, in the aftermath of the Abyssinian campaign in 1935–36. Antonella Viola discusses the role of Italian entrepreneurs in Bengal, particularly Calcutta, who were involved in the East-West trade from the mid19th century till the 1950s. Using both public and private documentation from a wide range of archival sources, this chapter examines how Italians interacted with the local society in carrying out commercial activities in the colonial city. She deals, in particular, with silk and coral trade which saw the involvement of specialized firms in Torre del Greco and other Italian cities. The family-based structure and the regional roots of entrepreneurial culture were crucial in favouring an understanding between Italian trading companies and their Bengali partners. Another important area of Italian activities in Bengal was the hospitality industry, where famous restaurants and hotels established by Angelo Firpo and Federico Peliti became an integral part of the city’s social landscape. Antonella Viola’s study thus provides a lively portrait of the activities of Italian traders and entrepreneurs in Bengal in the perspective of their daily negotiations. Sanjukta Das Gupta’s chapter continues this view on individual agency in the transcultural encounter, this time on the path from Bengal to Italy. Analysing selected travelogues and writings of both short- and long-term

Introduction 13 Bengali visitors to Italy, she points to their diverse and sometimes contradictory experiences and examines the impact of notions about Italy derived from their English education and the ‘disciplinary regimes’ of imperialism on their travel experience. The writings of well-known personalities of the late 19th century, like the civil servant Romesh Chunder Dutt, the maharaja of Burdwan Bijoy Chand Mahtab, the noted Bengali writer Trailokyanath Mukharji, as well as homemakers like Durgabati Ghose, underlined Europe as a differentiated rather than as a monolithic space. Since the 1930s, there was a deeper appreciation of contemporary Italian society and politics by Indian students and scholars like Benoy Sarkar, Kalidas Nag and Monindra Mohan Moulik. Inspired by anti-colonialism, they engaged in a close collaboration with Italian authorities even as they maintained an eclectic stance towards fascism. Mario Prayer’s chapter adds another dimension to the Bengal-Italy collaboration by focusing on several distinguished Bengali intellectuals who visited Italy in the inter-war period. In their engagement with the cultural and political life in the Old Continent, they acted as representatives of the aspirations of both Bengal and India on the international scene. In Italy, they met prominent scholars and thinkers, interacted with the government and won support for joint initiatives in various fields. The chapter establishes a link between the cultural projects of Bengali intellectuals and the ideas generated in the wake of the Swadeshi movement with its twin notions of atmashakti and visvashakti. Education and intellectual dialogue thus became the twin prongs of a foreign engagement aimed at developing a universal dimension of knowledge. Finally, the Post-script ties up some of the concerns raised in the chapters by bringing the volume up to the present moment of Bengal-Italy interactions facilitated by the Italian consul general Dr  Gianluca Rubagotti in Kolkata. In an interview given to the editors of the volume, Dr Rugabotti discusses various projects which highlight the cultural relations between Bengal and Italy and carry forward the legacy of intercultural engagements between these two regions. The chapters are thus closely intertwined in their narratives with internal references to great personalities or recurring themes, intents and situations. They shape up a many-sided conjunction of pasts, presents and futures where received notions are revised in a travel-like dimension to formulate new projects at home and ignite original partnerships at destination. Scope for further research The present collection of chapters does not claim to be exhaustive in the illustration of the Bengal-Italy encounter in modern and contemporary times. While it offers a few leads in areas that have been hitherto neglected

14  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer in literature, it also invites scholars to further enquiry. One may mention, for instance, the 19th-century Italian opera companies performing in Calcutta, or the propagation of Rabindrasangit in contemporary Italy. The Bengal-Italian literary intercourse, which has acquired a new dimension after the birth of East Pakistan and then Bangladesh, is still largely unexplored, as is the appreciation of Bengal’s communism in the internal debates of the Italian Communist Party. Little is known about the aims, modes and scope of Italian aid in Bengal, both East and West, while a comparative cultural and historical study of Bengali migrant communities residing in Italy – which have so far attracted some interest only from ethnographers – might bring into focus interesting stories in the transcultural perspective. Travel accounts, photography and memoirs by Italian journalists over the last two centuries may provide a large quantity of material and reveal significant information about perceived affinities and disparities between the communities involved. On these and other related themes, much remains to be said about Italy and Bengal. The editors and the authors of this book hope that their efforts may encourage further study in order to unearth Bengal’s and Italy’s contributions to each other’s cultural evolution. Notes 1 See Fischer-Tiné 2007; Bose and Manjapra 2010; Frost 2012; Raza, Roy, and Zachariah 2015. 2 For a recent example, see Bhattacharya 2018. 3 Tagore first travelled through Italy in 1878 on his way to England. 4 See, for instance, Salvemini 1957; Prayer 1996, 2011; Flora 2008; Kundu 2009. 5 See, among others, Gordon 1989; Prayer 1996; Casolari 2020; Framke 2016. 6 See Toye 1959; Hauner 1981; De Felice 1988; Gordon 1989; Prayer 1991; Sareen 2004; Hayes 2011; Casolari 2020.

References Bagal, Jogesh Chandra, ed. 1969. Bankim Rachanabali (Vol. III): Collection of English Works. Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad. Benessaieh, Afef. 2010. “Multiculturalism, Interculturality, Transculturality.” In Transcultural Americas/Amériques Transculturelles, edited by A. Benessaieh, 11–38. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université. Bhattacharya, France. 2018. “Les relations entre le Bengale et l’Italie, 1875–1930. De l’influence de Mazzini aux périples de Rabindranath Tagore.” In L’Inde et l’Italie. Rencontres intellectuelles, politiques et artistique, edited by T. Leucci, C. Markovitz, and M. Fourcade, 167–86. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Bose, Sugata, and Kris Manjapra, eds. 2010. Cosmopolitan Thought Zones. South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Introduction 15 Casolari, Marzia. 2020. In the Shadow of the Swastika. The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism. London and New York: Routledge. De Felice, Renzo. 1988. Il fascismo e l’Oriente. Arabi, Ebrei ed Indiani nella politica di Mussolini. Bologna: Il Mulino. Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian. 1923. Poems of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. A Forgotten Anglo-Indian Poet. Edited by F. B. Bradley-Birt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fasana, Enrico. 1984. “ ‘Moderati ed Estremisti’ nell’India Occidentale di fronte al Risorgimento Italiano.” In Garibaldi, Mazzini e il Risorgimento nel risveglio dell’Asia e dell’Africa, edited by G. Borsa e P. Beonio Brocchieri, 211–85. Milano: Franco Angeli. Fischer-Tiné, Harald. 2007. “Indian Nationalism and the ‘World Forces’: Transnational and Diasporic Dimensions of the Indian Freedom Movement on the Eve of the First World War.” Journal of Global History 2: 325–44. Flora, Giuseppe. 1994. Benoy Kumar Sarkar and Italy. Culture, Politics and Economic Ideology. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. ———. 2008. “Tagore and Italy: Facing History and Politics.” University of Toronto Quarterly 77, no. 4: 1025–57. Framke, Maria. 2016. “Shopping Ideologies for Independent India? Taraknath Das’s Engagement With Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.” Itinerario 40, no. 1: 55–81. Frost, Mark R. 2012. “ ‘Beyond the Limits of Nation and Geography’: Rabindranath Tagore and the Cosmopolitan Moment, 1916–1920.” Cultural Dynamics 24, nos. 2–3: 143–58. Ghosh, Amitav. 2019. Gun Island. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House. Gordon, Leonard A. 1989. Brothers Against the Raj: A  Biography of Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose. New Delhi: Viking. Hauner, Milan. 1981. India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian Nationalists in the Second World War. Stuttgart: Klenn-Cotta. Hayes, Romain. 2011. Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany. London: C. Hurst & Co. Kundu, Kalyan Kumar. 2009. Itali saphare Rabindranth o Musolini prasanga, Kolkata: Punashcha. Ortiz, Fernando. 1995. “The Social Phenomenon of Transculturation and Its Importance.” In Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 97–103. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1st ed. 1940). Palit, Ram Chandra, ed. 1894. Speeches of Babu Surendra Nath Banerjea 1876– 1880. Vol. I. Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri. Pettersson, Anders. 2008. “Transcultural Literary History: Beyond Constricting Notions of World Literature.” New Literary History 39, no. 3: 463–79. Prayer, Mario. 1991. “Italian Fascist Regime and Nationalist India.” International Studies 28, no. 3: 249–71. ———. 1996. Internazionalismo e nazionalismo culturale. Gli intellettuali bengalesi e l’Italia negli anni Venti e Trenta. Roma: Bardi.

16  Paromita Chakravarti and Mario Prayer ———. 2011. “Tagore’s Meeting with Benedetto Croce.” In Rabindranath Tagore. A Timeless Mind, edited by A. Biswas, C. Marsh, and K. Kundu, 265–75. London: Tagore Centre. Raychaudhuri, Tapan. 1988. Europe Reconsidered. Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Raza, Ali, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah, eds. 2015. The Internationalist Moment. South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–39. New Delhi: Sage. Roy, Rammohun. 1900. Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy. Edited by S. Dobson Collet and H. C. Sarkar. London: Harold Collet. Salvemini, Gaetano. 1957. “Tagore e Mussolini.” In Esperienze e studi socialisti in onore di U.G. Mondolfo, 191–206. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Sareen, Tilak Raj. 2004. Indian National Army: A  Documentary Study. 5 vols. New Delhi: Gyan. Sen, Satadru. 2015. Benoy Kumar Sarkar: Restoring the Nation to the World. London: Routledge. Spagnulo, Giuseppe. 2020. Il Risorgimento dell’Asia. India e Pakistan nella politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1980). Firenze: Le Monnier. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1925. “To Italia.” The Visva-Bharati Quarterly 3, no. 1: 11. ———. 1926. “The Meaning of Art.” The Visva-Bharati Quarterly 4, no. 1: 1–15. Toye, Hugh. 1959. The Springing Tiger. A Study of Subhas Chandra Bose. London: Cassell & Co.

Part 1

Encounters in Words and Sounds Literature, Music, Performance

1 From Dante to Rabindranath An Unfolding Renaissance Sukanta Chaudhuri

The use of the term ‘renaissance’ for the cultural transformation in 19thcentury Bengal is a subject of debate, but it has become the default English term for the movement, to be nuanced or contested as seen fit. We may avoid controversy by using the Bengali terms jagaran or nabajagaran, hence ‘awakening’ or ‘reawakening’ in English. But ‘renaissance’ has also come to mean a particular paradigm of cultural history repeated in various lands at various times (Goody 2010), with 19th-century Bengal as a prominent instance. I have argued elsewhere in support of this idea. I have also argued that the Bengal Renaissance develops organically from the European Renaissance through the ‘Oriental Renaissance’ in Europe (Chaudhuri 2009, 2010). My purpose in this chapter is more focused: first, to examine how far 19th-century Bengal consciously discerned or even adopted the model of a renaissance on European lines; and second, how far the Italian Renaissance featured in its thought and practice. For reasons that will emerge from my account, it is necessary to open the Italian narrative with Dante. Conceiving the renaissance When was the notion of a renaissance first applied to the agenda of the age? A  false trail issues from an alleged remark of Rammohan Ray: “I  began to think that something similar to the European Renaissance might have taken place here in India” (Kopf 1969, 2). Kopf cites George Smith’s Life of Alexander Duff; but the passage there only reads “I began to think that something similar might have taken place in India” (Smith 1879, 118), the similarity being with “the Christian Reformation”. However open to debate, the relation between the Protestant Reformation and the totality of the European Renaissance was commonly accepted at that time. It agrees squarely with Smith’s own premise (writing in 1879) of a full-fledged Renaissance in India. This ‘Renaissance’ is routed through the English language. It extends to “science and letters” (Smith 1879, 225), DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-3

20  Sukanta Chaudhuri but its chief thrust is theological in the widest sense, oriented in Duff and Smith’s case to Scottish Presbyterianism. The Italian Renaissance finds virtually no mention. This is part of a wider narrative of pedagogic, philosophical and theological bent, openly or implicitly assimilated to the notion of a ‘revival of learning’, a cerebral renaissance. In later scholarship, this line has been intensively studied from David Kopf to Alok Ray. But here again, 19thcentury Bengal did not accord Italy its seminal role in the revival classically so called. We learn in general terms of the intellectual revival of ‘Europe’, projected onto the current or future scene in Bengal or India. The Italian presence raises its head sporadically within this total design. In 1811, Lord Minto talks of the need for a “revival of letters” (Shibnath 2007, 52). Rammohan Ray, in his celebrated letter to Lord Amherst in 1823, envisages a centre where Indians would be instructed in “Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the Nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection”. He is therefore disappointed that instead, the British government is proposing “a Sangscrit school under Hindoo Pundits” (Rammohan 1973, 434). In 1849, the educationist John Drinkwater Bethune addressed the students of Krishnanagar College thus: if you do your duty, the English language will become to Bengal what, long ago, Greek and Latin were to England; and the ideas which you gain through English learning will, by your help, gradually be diffused by a vernacular literature through the masses of your countrymen. (Jogindranath 1925, 160–61) Already the previous year, Akshaykumar Datta had written in Tattwabodhini patrika, with the usual dismissal of European medieval culture: In Europe, learning could not progress as long as was it cultivated in Latin. But when the people of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and other countries began to consolidate their native languages, Europe became redolent with the fame of its authors, and bright with the light of learning. The same “pleasurable prospect” awaits Indians if they develop their own languages and publish quality books in them (Akshay 2014, 91). In 1872, an article in the journal Bangadarshan (following a now-lost English text by the grammarian John Beames) proposed a Bengali academy on the lines of the Accademia della Crusca. The author notes that the latter adopted Petrarca’s language as its model, while also taking on board Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and “inferior” poets such as Pulci and Boiardo (Bangadarshan

From Dante to Rabindranath 21 1975, 161). I know of no other Bengali work that names so many Renaissance Italian poets in a single sentence or, indeed, at all. Language being seen as crucial to the resurgence of Bengal, a debate arose whether this was best ensured by reinventing Sanskrit studies or by turning to English and other European languages with the new world of learning they opened up, including a new approach to Sanskrit studies and India’s ancient heritage. The course of history, as well as the explicit positions of contemporary thinkers, inclined overwhelmingly to the latter. Rammohan Ray, in his letter to Lord Amherst, declares that “the Sangscrit system of education would be best calculated to keep this country in darkness” (Rammohan 1973, 436). Even more uncompromising is the educational agenda of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. Although his concern is with the Sanskrit College, he prescribes for it a strongly Westernized curriculum routed through the English language in order to enhance Bengali learning and letters. In his 1852 ‘Notes’ on the Sanscrit College, he proposes to discontinue “the study of mathematics in Sanscrit”, and to retain classical Indian philosophy only to contrast it later, to its disadvantage, with “the modern Philosophy of Europe” (Vidyasagar 1960, 382–83). In his letter of September 1853 to F.I. Mouat, secretary of the Council of Education, on curricular reform, he categorically declares that “the Vedanta and the Sankhya are false systems of Philosophy”, to be balanced by “sound Philosophy in the English course” (Vidyasagar 1960, 391). Akshaykumar Datta grants the intellectual stature of classical Indian philosophy, but dismisses its effective worth in the absence of “a single Bacon” to guide its path (Akshay 2014, 285). Vidyasagar’s agenda appears to repeat Macaulay’s prescription of a “class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”, who can interpret Western, and more specifically English, learning and culture to the “millions” of their countrymen by “refin[ing] the vernacular dialects” (Macaulay 1935, 359). But in fact, there is a complete paradigm shift: as interpreted by Ishwarchandra or Akshaykumar, Western-educated Indians would take their bearings from their home ground, linguistically and culturally, and interpret the new world of learning to their fellow-Indians as an autochthonous sphere of inquiry. We must wait till 1891 for Gooroodas (Gurudas) Banerjee, the first Indian vicechancellor of Calcutta University, to declare for his institution the vision of a renaissance mediated through the Indian languages that Vidyasagar had envisaged for the Sanskrit College nearly forty years earlier: The darkness of the Middle Ages of Europe was not completely dispelled until the light of knowledge shone through the medium of the numerous modern languages. So in India . . . the dark depths of ignorance all

22  Sukanta Chaudhuri round will never be illumined until the light of knowledge reaches the masses through the medium of their own vernaculars. (University 1957, 1:146) Sir Gooroodas’s words reflect the historiography implicit in the notion of a renaissance. An 1871 article entitled ‘Bengali Literature’ in the Calcutta Review, published anonymously but reliably ascribed to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, had observed: It was chiefly among the supple and pliant Italians that the revival of learning in Europe began; and it is possible to imagine that the Bengalis – the Italians of Asia, as the Spectator has called them – are now doing a great work, by, so to speak, acclimatising European ideas. (Bankim 2014–17, 6:180; on the authorship, see 6:676) Rammohan’s letter to Amherst in 1823 does not use the terms ‘revival’ or ‘renaissance’. But crucially, he adopts the historiography of a glorious awakening after a period of darkness and decline: “compare the state of Science and literature in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon with the progress of knowledge made since he wrote” (Rammohan 1973, 436). Akshaykumar implies the same historiography. (Needless to say, Bacon was hardly the sole or even the first pioneer of this scientific resurgence.) It was only a matter of time before the full threefold design was adopted: an ancient Graeco-Roman upsurge, followed by a decline in the ‘Middle’ Ages and then a rebirth. Bankim evokes the full triadic paradigm in his treatise on equality (Samya): In Europe too [i.e., as in India] religious preachers had spread the doctrine of unworldliness. That is why, after the end of Roman civilization, the material condition of humankind remained unimproved for a thousand years. . . . But after the revival of Greek letters and philosophy in Italy, the education it inculcated led to a decline in the dissatisfaction with things material. . . . The subjects of Europe, aroused from slumber, strove to ensure material happiness and remove social inequalities. (Bankim 2014–17, 3:553) In India, says Bankim, the doctrine of unworldliness remained too deeply entrenched till his own time for this change to take place. The Italian Renaissance and 19th-Century Bengal What place is Renaissance Italy accorded in this design? The candid answer must be, very little. European history is traced in a great sweep from classical

From Dante to Rabindranath 23 Greece through republican and imperial Rome, then a grossly simplified and denigrated Middle Ages, to a general revival with few specific markers, leading up to the 19th century. The focal point of this revival, more often than not, is sought in the assertion of rational and human values in the scientific Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The Renaissance may not be mentioned at all. The trend is epitomized in extenso in the 1897 essay Paradhinata (Subjugation) by Ramendrasundar Trivedi. He postulates a thousand years of “deep darkness of ignorance”, the “unchained barbarism” of the dark age (tamas jug) of European history (Ramendra 1975–9, 1:340, 348). While celebrating the eventual escape from this condition through a reassertion of the human spirit, he leaves the date of the turn unspecified, running together the feudal age and the rise of the nationstate. The two historical markers he cites are the French Revolution and “the proud forward march of science” in the late 19th century (Ramendra 1975–9, 1:341, 348). The Renaissance finds no mention. It is named in the 1899 essay Samajik byadhi o tahar pratikar (Social Maladies and Their Remedy: Ramendra 1975–9, 1:395), in an undifferentiated list comprising the spread of Christianity, the rise of chivalry, the Renaissance and Reformation, and the French Revolution. Disconcertingly, in the latter essay, Ramendrasundar explicitly dissociates this progress in the West from any matching development in his own land: I cannot possibly agree with those who see the present times as a new awakening in the life of the nation. I  would question the eyesight of those who discern a new radiance after centuries of darkness. (Ramendra 1975–9, 1:392) Instead, he adopts another chronology not uncommon in that age. His own times, and the preceding period of Muslim rule, he sees as the ‘afternoon’ of India’s national life. This life, founded in the shastras in ancient times, was enriched and revitalized, rather than destroyed, by repeated ‘attacks’ from within like Buddhism, Charvak’s materialism, Sikhism and Kabir’s pietism, besides external enemies like the Shakas and Huns. (This is one of many texts of the age that can be read out of context to support a narrow Hindutva ideology, but prove on inspection to be opposite in intent.) Hence, there are things to boast of even in his own times: a Bankim for a Shakespeare, a Jagadish Bose (Basu) for a Michael Faraday (Ramendra 1975–9, 1:392). The classic statement of this periodization, with a renaissance embedded in it, is in Bankim’s 1880 essay Bangalar itihas sambandhe kayekti katha (A Few Points about the History of Bengal). This ‘Renaissance’ (so designated) is coeval with the European, epitomized in the career of Shri

24  Sukanta Chaudhuri Chaitanya and continuing in “countless poets, theologians and scholars”. The subsequent flowering of Vaishnava poetry is “of immeasurable force, unmatched in the world” (Bankim 4:148). Six years earlier, Bankim had made the point in another essay, Bangalar itihas (The History of Bengal), without using the term ‘renaissance’: in the 15th and 16th centuries, “the face of Bengal was lit up by the radiance of the Bengali intellect as never before or since” (Bankim 2014–17, 4:135). The idea is expanded in Shrikrishna Das’s long account of Chaitanya published serially in Bankim’s journal Bangadarshan in 1875. Das finds Chaitanya’s predecessors in Adwaitacharya and Bharati Goswami – like, he says, Wyclif before Luther, Galileo before Newton or Rammohan before the American reformer William Parker (Bangadarshan 1975, 228). There is a piquant historiography implicit in these parallels, to which for good measure he adds John the Baptist before Christ. In 1895, Romesh Chunder Dutt (Rameshchandra Datta) finds a renaissance coeval with the European not only in Bengal but across India: “in every province of India . . . this age of renaissance and reform, which corresponds curiously with the age of renaissance and reform in Europe” (Dutt 1895, 78). Much later, J.C. Ghosh, in his Bengali Literature, talks of “the Hindu renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries” (Ghosh 1948, 10). There is little recognition of Italy, or indeed any specific part of Europe, in the Renaissance so conceptualized and transferred to the context of Indian history. This is also the case if the local renaissance is placed in 19th-century Bengal. In 1881, Haraprasad Shastri cites the original Italian locale of the European Renaissance narrowly and perfunctorily. He extols the Bengal Renaissance in effusive terms, as far superior to that triggered by the fall of Constantinople, when “the learned men of the new Rome fled with their learning to their co-religionists on the Venetian coast”. That learning, allegedly, went no further than reviving the Greek classics; whereas in Bengal, all Western learning has opened up its hidden store to the Bengali gaze. . . . There is moreover the revival of Sanskrit letters, the recovery of Buddhist texts. See what a bottomless store of wealth we have acquired. Who ever had such good fortune? (Haraprasad 2004, 170) The material so unearthed comprises the literature of England, France, Germany and Italy (named in that order), as of the ancient Hindus and Buddhists. Italy is not specially privileged despite being recognized as the starting point of the movement in Europe. In fact, we are left uncertain (as sometimes elsewhere) whether the Italian literature in question derives from the Renaissance or from ancient Rome.

From Dante to Rabindranath 25 Vivekananda has a piquant explanation for this neglect. He accepts that the Renaissance (so named, and placed in the 16th century) came first to Italy: “cultural currents from all directions flowed into Florence and combined to take on new forms.” But Italy was like an old man: “he stirred a little, then turned on his side and went back to sleep.” So around the same time did another “very old man”, India, who had woken up somewhat under three Mughal reigns starting with Akbar’s and amply fostered literature, art and thought. In Europe, the “new blood” coursed through the veins of the new “Frankish race” (frna jati) – a term that seems to combine both the ancient Franks and the modern French nation (“Prachya o paschatya”: East and West; Vivekananda 2014, 192–93). There follows a eulogy of the city of Paris and the French spirit of liberty. The Revolution triumphs again over the Renaissance, though the latter finds unusually clear mention. Throughout the age, interest in Italy, where it exists, focuses where the action is: ancient Rome at one end, the Risorgimento at the other. Garibaldi and Mazzini acquired a following in Bengal, and books were written about them. This did not happen with any figure from the Italian Renaissance. But needless to say, Western history and culture entered more and more deeply into the mental life of Bengal. Italy in general, with the Italian Renaissance as its part, finds sporadic mention – briefly and casually as a rule, but perhaps more significant thereby. The writings of Kaliprasanna Ghosh are especially notable in this respect. His formidable range of references includes, besides much else, not only Raphael and Galileo (the latter placed at par with the Buddha and Christ) but also the medieval populist leader Cola di Rienzo; the viciously cruel Gian Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan; and the 18th-century poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio (respectively: Kaliprasanna 1989, 42, 41, 150, 141, 167). Di Rienzo is compared to politicians of Kaliprasanna’s own times, the Greek Ypsilantis and the French Jules Favre, fleetingly linking the early Renaissance with European issues more salient for 19th-century Bengal. These passing mentions testify to the author’s easy familiarity with the Italian Renaissance as with countless other matters. This organic absorption is more familiar to us from Akshaykumar, Bankim or Ramendrasundar. Bankim’s engagement with Italy might have been greater than his texts suggest, bearing more directly on his vision of a renaissance in Bengal. Haraprasad Shastri, who interacted closely with him, relates: He [Bankim] had read the history of Europe thoroughly. He was always talking of the Medicean Renaissance in Florence. He had deeply absorbed the history of the Renaissance, and was specially eager that Bengal too might be infused with new life by following the same path. (Haraprasad 1915, 20)

26  Sukanta Chaudhuri An ingrained awareness of the Italian Renaissance can be taken as a consistent if seldom explicit presence in the educated Bengali sensibility of the age. It can sometimes come to life in unexpected settings. The poet Debendranath Sen, for instance, has a surprising double sonnet Raphael, chitrabidya o madonna (Debendra 1912b, 82–83), where Saraswati, goddess of learning, descends with her train to fête the painter and, finally, herself assumes the form of the Madonna with the painter clinging to her like the Christ-child. Raphael is addressed as the ‘poet’ of pictorial art; Debendranath can thus hopefully demand the same honour for himself. In the dedication to Apurba shishumangal, he compares the verbal skill of the dedicatee, the writer Sudhindranath Tagore (Thakur), to Raphael’s brushwork (Debendra 1912a). But his attachment to Raphael shows best in a sonnet evoking the painter’s Vision of a Knight (National Gallery, London). The two female figures are identified somewhat simplistically with the goddess of action (Karma-debi) and the alluring witch of material appetites (bhog-spriha). The former alludes to the book she holds; the sword is implicit in her call to battle with the syncretic cry “Jai Durga” (Debendra 1912c, 49–50). Kaliprasanna Ghosh too alludes to Raphael, if only in passing (Kaliprasanna 1989, 42). In 19th-century Bengal, European painters were more than names read in print. Engraved reproductions circulated among the bourgeoisie. The wealthier elite acquired actual paintings and sculptures – usually copies or originals by minor artists, but more ambitiously where purse and inclination allowed. The high point was the collection started by Rajendralal Mallik in 1836 in his newly built Marble Palace (Manasij 2016, 129). The more usual level is indicated by Rabindranath’s description of the public rooms in the nouveau riche Madhusudan Ghoshal’s mansion in the novel Jogajog (Relationships): Its walls were covered with patterned paper and hung with pictures of various kinds, some engravings, others oleographs or oils. Their subjects were stags being chased by hunting dogs, famous horses which had won the Derby, European landscapes, or bathing nudes. (Rabindranath 2006, 94) The legacy of the Italian Renaissance is modified and, as here, diluted by later developments, especially among the English School. The full synthesis of Western cultural materials in the thought and literature of Bengal in the age is immeasurably more complex, refined and momentous, but not dissimilar in constitution. The Italian component emerges from time to time from the equipage of the European Renaissance generally and the overwhelming presence of its English variants and overlays.

From Dante to Rabindranath 27 Dante to Tasso in 19th-century Bengali poetry The Italian language was little cultivated then, as indeed now. The one major exception is Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Datta), of whom more below. When the University of Calcutta was founded in 1857, its First Arts Examination accommodated Latin, Greek and Hebrew but not the modern European languages (University 1957, 89). Any instruction would have to be privately obtained, and there seems little evidence of this happening with Italian. We cannot be sure how much, if any, Italian was mastered by the historians Rajendralala Mitra and Ramdas Sen or the musicologist Shourindramohan Tagore (Thakur). Their writings are exclusively in English and Indian languages, but they were sufficiently known – indeed, honoured – in Italian indological circles to be included in the Dizionario biografico degli scrittori contemporanei edited by the Italian orientalist Angelo de Gubernatis in 1879. There was nothing corresponding to Toru Dutt’s (Datta) immersion in French, or (from the evidence of the Dutt Family Album) her uncle Omesh Chunder (Umeshchandra) Dutt’s in German. Her A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields contains two sonnets addressed to Michelangelo and Dante, both translated from the 19th-century French poet Auguste Barbier, the latter inaccurately addressing Dante as “old Ghibelin”. The only Renaissance items are one each by Du Bellay, Du Bartas and Corneille (respectively: Dutt 1880, 161, 165, 1, 2, 3). Toru Dutt sees Italian culture in a pan-European perspective through French spectacles, like most of her countrymen through English ones. The process started with the Hindu College, whether through the formal curriculum or the charismatic impact of the youthful teacher Henry Derozio. Derozio wrote sonnets to Italy and Tasso, and even refers in a poem to François I’s letter to his mother after his defeat in the Battle of Pavia in 1525 (respectively: Derozio 1923, 46, 47, 58–60). But beyond these incidental allusions, there is nothing to suggest an independent interest in Italy after the Roman Empire. An 1843 article on British Indian Literature, perhaps by C.J. Montague, a teacher at Kolkata’s Oriental Seminary, observes: It is pleasant to sit with Dante on the brow of the rock, whence his imagination furnished him with materials for his ‘Inferno’, or be buried in the woods of Avignon and read with Petrarch his sonnets to Laura. (Montague 2008, 81–82) This is followed by references to Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. It was through this Anglophone – and frequently Anglophile – conduit that Dante and Petrarca, with a sprinkling of other writers, became part of the general equipment of the English-educated Bengali. Even Michael Madhusudan

28  Sukanta Chaudhuri Dutt with his unique language skills says, after citing Dante, Petrarca and Tasso, “but give me the literature, the language, of the Anglo-Saxon!” (The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu: Michael 1974, 638). Another celebrated teacher of English literature at Hindu College, David Lester Richardson, brought out a voluminous Selections from the British Poets (1840). We may take this as laying out the agenda of Western literary training for the educated Indians of the time. Its bulk consists of 1,528 large columns of English poetry. This is followed by nearly a hundred columns of translations from Greek, Latin and modern European languages. The Italian selection (Richardson 1840, cols. 1575–92), reproducing various earlier translations, comprises Dante, Petrarca, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Boiardo, Ariosto, Michelangelo, Tasso, Fracastoro, Giovanni della Casa and a few others down to Giambattista Pastorini (1650–1732) and Metastasio. Henry Carey’s blank-verse translation of Dante’s Inferno appeared in 1805, and the entire Commedia in 1814. La vita nuova appeared in 1861 among Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s renderings of the early Italian poets. A full verse translation by many hands of Petrarca’s Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems appeared in 1859 in Bohn’s Illustrated Library, but clearly did not have the same impact. Dante remains the only substantial Italian presence in Bengali literature – much more so than all the writers of the actual Renaissance taken together. This is not the Dante constructed by European, especially French, orientalism through the work of Ozanam, Delécluze, Lamartine and Victor Hugo (Schwab 1984, 321–22, 355–57, 370). The Bengali’s Dante is an extension of the English literary universe. Even Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay, whose Chhayamayi kabya marks the greatest ever impact of any Italian writer on a Bengali work, expresses his debt to Dante through a passage from Spenser on his title page. One major (though not total) exception is Michael Madhusudan Dutt. He writes to Rajnarayan Basu on 1 July  1860 that he reads Dante and Tasso in translation (Michael 1974, 549). But by the end of the year, he has mastered enough Italian to tell the same friend: I am just now reading Tasso in the original. .  .  . Oh! what luscious poetry. If God spares me for some years yet, I  shall write a poem, a Romantic one in the Ottava Rima or stanzas of eight lines like his. He adds that he contemplates writing his projected (but never written) epic on the conquest of Sri Lanka in that form (Michael 1974, 557). A chief occupation during his European sojourn of 1862–67 – more so, one suspects, than its ostensible purpose, to study law – was the intensive cultivation of “the three great continental languages, viz., Italian, German and French” (letter to Gourdas Basak, 26 January 1865: Michael 1974, 599).

From Dante to Rabindranath 29 In a letter to Vidyasagar from Versailles on 11 July 1864, he says he has written “a long letter in Italian” to Satyendranath Tagore (Michael 1974, 585) – who therefore presumably knew the language, though his younger brother Rabindranath did not (see further). Dante and Tasso are perceptible presences in Meghnadbadh kabya (The Poem of the Slaying of Meghnad). Some details in the description of hell in canto 8 owe as much or more to Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 6 as to Dante. But the fiery inscription over hell-gate is straight out of Inferno 3:1–9: “The sinner goes this way to suffer eternal dole in the realm of sorrow. Abandon all attachments (spriha), you who enter here” (Meghnad 8:218–20; all citations from Michael 1973). Dantesque too is the way dead souls express their amazement on finding Rama traversing the next world in living human shape (8:355–6, 612–13, 672–5, 698–9). And without corresponding precisely to anything in Dante, the pains of hell have the same lurid and repellent quality, far exceeding anything in Virgil. In fact, the Inferno leaves a clearer imprint on Meghnadbadh than does La Gerusalemme liberata. Pramila in battle array (Meghnad 3:74–176) recalls Tasso’s Clorinda only in general terms, whether of appearance or situation. The bower (pramod-udyan) where Meghnad disports himself in female company (1:625–53) is no closer to Armida’s island (Gerusalemme cantos 14, 16): in fact, the name pramod-udyan (1:599) reflects Spenser’s Bower of Bliss with its enchantress Acrasia, created in imitation of Tasso (The Faerie Queene 2:12). Meghnad’s final abashed return to his martial duties (1:668–713) recalls Rinaldo’s departure from the island in Tasso (Gerusalemme 16:34–5), but only fleetingly. We might also question Michael’s direct debt to Dante or Petrarca in his Chaturdashpadi kabitabali (Fourteen-line Poems), a collection of the first sonnets composed in Bengali. He needed no Italian model for a verseform acclimatized in English for centuries. In fact, he composed several sonnets in English early in his career, as also one in Bengali in 1860 which he sent to Rajnarayan Basu with the comment: “In my humble opinion, if cultivated by men of genius, our sonnet in time would rival the Italian” (Michael 1974, 556). (He talks of reading Tasso in the same letter.) Later Bengali sonnet writers – Rajkrishna Ray, for instance – look back no further than Michael, though they too must have been familiar with English practice. But his stay in Europe, and closer engagement with Italian and French poetry, made Michael look at the form in a new light and take up, with typical self-esteem, the course he had suggested for “men of genius” in 1860. In his 1865 letter to Gourdas Basak, cited earlier, he writes: “I have lately been reading Petrarca, the Italian Poet and scribbling some ‘Sonnets’, after his manner” (Michael 1974, 600). The second sonnet in the collection extols Petrarca as an exponent of the form. Also in 1865, he commemorates

30  Sukanta Chaudhuri the sixth centenary of Dante’s birth with a sonnet that he sent to King Victor Emmanuel with Italian and French translations (Michael 1974, 602). The king’s minister replied, gratified “that the profound and noble harmony of the Italian genius finds an echo on the shores of the Ganges” (Michael 1974, [forty-four]). But none of the other sonnets relates to Italy, and few to Europe. Instead, they honour a range of Sanskrit and Bengali writers from Valmiki to Kalidasa, Krittibas to Ishwarchandra Gupta and other Indian personalities like Vidyasagar. Others treat of Indian mythology, moral and philosophical subjects, or landscapes and objects of nature. There is even one addressed to a cobra. Michael is perhaps the most cosmopolitan and syncretic poet ever to have written in the Bengali language – inter alia, in turning newly imported forms into crucibles for an intricate synthesis of East and West, classical and modern. Meghnadbadh kabya is the supreme instance of this synthesis. Within it, all said and done, neither Dante nor Tasso provides more than passing embellishments. Dante enters much more organically into the simpler but strikingly original, not to say bizarre, construct of Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay’s Chhayamayi kabya (The Poem of Shadows, 1880). In his choric ode Indralaye Saraswatipuja (Saraswati Worship in Heaven, 1876; Hemchandra 1953–4, 1: Kabitabali 7), Hemchandra had linked Dante and Milton, exhorting them to show not only hell but “all three realms” (heaven, earth and hell), yet focusing on Yama the death-god’s fearsome abode. The preface to Chhayamayi indicates the reason: he could not adopt the Christian doctrine of purgatory and paradise. Hence, despite professing to draw substantially on Dante’s thought and style, he can promise the reader only a “slight trace” (kinchitmatra abhas) of Dante’s work (Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:3). Hemchandra understates the innovative design of his own work. His protagonist is a man overcome with grief at his daughter’s death, carrying her body from place to place without bringing himself to cremate it. He finally arrives at a cremation-ground where there descends to him a radiant goddess-like figure from the skies. After ensuring the daughter’s last rites, she takes him with her to visit the next world. The geography of this world is a curious inversion of Dante’s. Hell is not located underground but dispersed among the stars, each accommodating a particular region or circle of hell. Yama, god of death, in his aspect of the lord of virtuous justice (dharmaraj), sits in the remote (and rather impressively described) heavens. He weighs the good and bad deeds of each dead soul in his balance and gives judgement. The souls are then ferried across the river Baitarani to the gigantic Kalpurush (Orion), who tosses them to the appropriate infernal star to undergo punishment. Hemchandra divests Dante’s mythos of its Christian content but scarcely aligns it with Hindu orthodoxy either. All souls have committed some sins and must therefore suffer – even the saintly Yudhistira for the one lie he

From Dante to Rabindranath 31 ever told (canto 4; Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:34). But having served out their punishment, the liberated souls (mukta prani) emerge in radiant heavenly forms, building up “a new sky and stars, a new earth, a new sun and moon and universe”. These freed beings can also descend to earth to guide and succour the living, “dispelling the web of error, showing the straight path to all who have strayed” (canto 3; Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:20–1). In other words, hell also assumes the function of purgatory, while the contours of paradise are left obscure. If Hemchandra’s execution had matched his conception, Chhayamayi would have rivalled Meghnadbadh. As it is, it remains a compelling tour de force. Most of it is taken up with the account of hell, in a creative assimilation of the Inferno. The poet draws many details from Dante, but nearly always in combination with new elements in the same imaginative vein. The first sufferers the visitor sees (canto 4; Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:23–24) have their faces turned backwards like Dante’s sorcerers (Inferno 20:10– 15). The bloody boiling slime in canto 5 in which sinners are immersed, or to which they speed in the vain hope of slaking their thirst (Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:40–43), reflects both Dante’s Phlegethon (Inferno 12) and the boiling pitch of Inferno 21. The floating mass of diseased souls immediately after this (Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:44) recalls the “valley of disease” in Inferno 29. In canto 7 (Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:71–75), the souls immured in trees and torn by vultures for the sin of “secret lust” closely recall Dante’s wood of the suicides with its harpies (Inferno 13), but the centaurs shooting arrows at them are from Inferno 12. Later in canto 7 (Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:80), a winged python swallows and regurgitates sinners’ bodies like the serpents in Inferno 24. There are more scattered fragments from Dante, usually overlaid by other components. The sinners are seldom named, but those that are form a curiously mixed lot. The perpetrators of falsehood (canto 4; Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:33–34) include the dubious 17th-century English priest Titus Oates as well as Shakuni from the Mahabharata; also Mark Antony orating over Caesar’s corpse, clearly drawn from Shakespeare. Was Hemchandra unconsciously prompted by the figure of Shakespeare’s Brutus, leading him to substitute an ethical and literary universe radically different from Dante’s, whose Brutus is one of the three foulest traitors in human history? Not the least arresting feature of Chhayamayi is the heavenly figure leading the protagonist. She finally reveals herself as his dead daughter, who has passed through the next world and is now returned to earth to guide her distracted father as, by her earlier account, such liberated souls can do (canto 8; Hemchandra 1953–4, 2:81–82). Hemchandra has ingeniously combined the roles of Virgil and Beatrice in the Commedia: a happy result of his freedom from the compulsions of Christian theology.

32  Sukanta Chaudhuri Chhayamayi is an unfairly neglected work, poetically undistinguished but of an awesome imaginative sweep. It marks the most substantial creative reception in Bengali of Italian literature of any period, perhaps excepting certain plays of the late 20th century. It also prompts speculation about hidden absorption elsewhere. Could the evolving figure of Beatrice, from the Vita nuova to the Commedia, be the governing presence in Biharilal Chakrabarti’s Saradamangal (roughly, The Grace of Sarada)? This work, a collection of lyrics loosely gathered in cantos, appeared in full in December  1879, some two weeks before Chhayamayi, but Biharilal had been working on it since 1870. Sarada is Saraswati, the goddess of art and learning; but as Biharilal explains in a letter to his friend Anathbandhu Ray, his Sarada is an intriguingly composite figure, an object of the poet’s yearning for friendship and love as well as poetic inspiration, the last in three phases. The poet’s “love, separation and reunion” (prem, biraha o milan: Biharilal 1950, [9]) vis-àvis Saraswati thus becomes a trope of his whole life-story, romantic and personal no less than philosophic or devotional. There is no allusion to Dante in Saradamangal nor, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere else in Biharilal; but the parallel with Beatrice is worth pondering. Rabindranath Biharilal is chiefly remembered as an influence on Rabindranath Tagore (Thakur). In his writings, Rabindranath alludes occasionally to the European or specifically Italian Renaissance. In 1878, at the age of seventeen, he wrote two essays on Dante and Petrarca for the journal Bharati brought out by his family. They contain some memorable translations from both poets, but little else besides a resumé of their life and works – in Dante’s case, focusing on La vita nuova more than the Commedia, of which there is only a token account. The title, translating as “Beatrice, Dante, and His Poetry” (RRVB 29:138–52), indicates the thrust of the young poet’s approach. The other title, too, translates as “Petrarca and Laura” (RRVB 29:152–61); a subsequent piece on Goethe, as “Goethe and the Women He Loved” (RRVB 29:161–70). Dante is virtually the only Italian writer to feature at all in Rabindranath’s other writings, chiefly with reference to La vita nuova. The essay on Goethe provides the key, contrasting the latter’s multiple amours with Dante’s (also Petrarca’s) idealized passion: Real events are the life of drama, the ideal world the pleasure-ground of poetry. . . . Goethe could weave his love into drama where ordinary people found a reflection of their own hearts. But Dante could only express

From Dante to Rabindranath 33 in poetry the wave of feeling (bhabtaranga) rising in his heart from his interactions with Beatrice: nobody else could have voiced this. (RRVB 29:162) In other words, it was the idealizing, unworldly sentiment of Dante’s love that struck Rabindranath, embodied in the Beatrice of La vita nuova rather than the Commedia. This accords with the general treatment of love in Rabindranath’s earlier poetry, culminating in the 1890 collection Manasi (The Woman of the Mind). But Dante’s love persists as a trope, to reappear decades later in the unexpected setting of the late political novel Char adhyay (Four Chapters, 1934). Atin, the compromised and ultimately frustrated apostle of violent revolution, sees his career as a lapse from his ennobling love for his fellow-combatant Ela: Suddenly one day, at a bend in the road, the goddess of fortune had appeared before him with an amazing gift of beauty, like a miracle. . . . He had often felt that Dante and Beatrice had been born anew in the two of them. That historic inspiration had spoken to his soul. Like Dante, Atin had plunged into the maelstrom of political revolution; but where was its truth, its valour, its glory? Before he knew, it had drawn him into the slime with irresistible speed. (RRVB 13:307) Rabindranath accepts the totality of Dante’s worldly experience but confines his love to an ideal and rarefied plane. Beatrice’s death, placing him forever beyond his reach, is therefore essential to preserve the purity of that love: Beatrice stirred Dante’s imagination at the point of location of an infinite love-yearning (biraha). His heart found its full moon in the distant sky of separation. (Paschimjatrir dayari: The Diary of a Traveller to the West; RRVB 19:389) Such romanticizing of the ideally remote is the polar opposite of selfdestructive revolutionary romanticism. Atin’s Beatrice is fatally close to him, utterly surrendering by the end to his masterful power. She cannot rescue him from the abyss but destroys herself instead. Yet Atin’s end cannot compromise Dante’s own synthesis of the worldly and ideal realms. In a 1901 essay on poets’ biographies, Rabindranath observes that “Dante’s poetry is entwined with his life. If we read the two together, both the life and the poetry acquire greater worth” (Kabijibani: The Poet’s Life; RRVB

34  Sukanta Chaudhuri 8:453). He may not have only La vita nuova in mind: his 1878 essay already shows his acquaintance, however cursory as yet, with the Commedia. We do not know how far he extended that acquaintance. In 1924, he told a Chinese audience how in his youth he had “tried to approach Dante, unfortunately through a translation”, and thenceforth “felt it [his] pious duty to desist”; hence Dante remained “a closed book” to him (Talks in China; EW 2:588). Yet maybe he did open it sometimes, even to the last cantica of the Commedia which he ignores in 1878. Sixty-two years later, during his penultimate illness, he sees a great vision: A myriad stars and planets, in skies beyond skies, sustain a titanic harmony. Its rhythm is never broken, nor its music impeded; there is no lapse through distortion. There in the sky, unfolding its petals in layers, I see a great radiant rose. (Rogshajyay poem 21: RRVB 25:24) It might be the chance convergence of two imaginations of genius; yet we cannot but recall the celestial rose in the last cantos of the Paradiso, of course without Dante’s detailed enumeration of the heavenly host: I saw, rising above the light all round in more than a thousand tiers, . . . the eternal rose, which expands and rises in ranks and exhales odors of praise to the Sun that makes perpetual spring. (Paradiso 30:112–13, 124–26; Dante 1939, 437) If this is indeed a conscious recall, it twins notably with the reflection (noted in Sankha 2002, 7) of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (Uffizi, Firenze) in an 1890 poem to the mythical Ahalya, long imprisoned in stone but now undergone a new birth: Exquisite, unclad, mysterious form, the fullness of youth bathed in the freshness of childhood. . . . You rise from the blue waters . . . like the first sunrise. (“Ahalyar prati”, Manasi; RRVB 2:265) No other Italian author of any period has left an impact on Rabindranath. He even notes that “Dante demonstrated by the power of his genius which provincial tongue would become the Italian language everywhere for all time” (Bhashar katha: About Language; Bangla shabdatattwa; RRVB 28:497). Beames, in his aforementioned essay translated in Bangadarshan, states more correctly that it was primarily Petrarca’s Tuscan that served this purpose (Bangadarshan, 161). But the reference shows how Rabindranath is aware of the Italian Renaissance, if largely within the greater European

From Dante to Rabindranath 35 movement. In this, he follows his predecessors and contemporaries of the long Bengal Renaissance. He proceeds to another concept in line with later thinking: of a renaissance not as a specific period or event but a paradigm of history, a pattern repeated from age to age in various cultures. Of the relevant passages, two might appear inconsequential, indeed as leading us away from Italy towards England. Talking to the singer and musicologist Dilipkumar Ray on 29 March 1925, he says: “During the Renaissance, English literature received its impetus from Italy, but its awakening was all its own. Most of Shakespeare’s plays are foreign imports, but we cannot say they are stolen goods” (Sangitchinta: Thoughts on Music; RRVB 28:775). He elaborates on the idea in the 1933 essay Kalantar: When once, during the Renaissance, the spiritual energy of Italy had stirred and influenced all Europe, it is not surprising that it should have impacted in many ways on England’s literary creators: had it not happened, that absence would have been barbaric. A  living mind cannot but be influenced by a dynamic one. Where there is a continuous flow of such giving and taking, the spirit is alive and awake. (RRVB 24:245) In other words, Rabindranath sees a renaissance, whether or not so designated, as marked by a traffic of ideas, a ceaseless transfer and exchange. The process is important, not the term. In another conversation with Dilipkumar Ray on 26 March  1938, Rabindranath talks of the legendary musician Tansen of the Emperor Akbar’s court: Tansen and Akbar died and turned to ghosts long ago; should we still persist with the last rites of their music? Of course not. We will learn Tansen’s tunes, but for what purpose? So that you might invoke in your own being what you are calling a renaissance [using the English word], a rebirth. . . . We are all in pursuit of freedom, and that freedom can only be attained by the path of new creation. (Sangitchinta; RRVB 28:801) There is no mention of either Italy or Europe. ‘Renaissance’ has become a general term for the creative reception of intellectual and cultural material from one milieu and its transformation in another. The precise application of that ‘we’ might be uncertain, but Rabindranath is clearly advancing a general position of the times. Hence, even when he does not use the term ‘renaissance’, his account of the cultural ferment of the age, starting before his own time, evokes the paradigm: “In our childhood, we saw the

36  Sukanta Chaudhuri emergence of a new era. It had its advent in the conjunction of ancient learning with European methods of analysis” (‘Haraprasad Shastri’ 2; RRVB 31:127). He expands the idea in a wider context in a speech critiquing the idea of an exclusively Hindu university: At the first moment of awakening, we experience ourselves; the very next moment, we start to experience everything around us. If, when our national spirit is first aroused, we strongly feel our sense of difference, we need not be alarmed. That awakening will itself open up a greater awareness of everything around us. We will seek to know it all, along with comprehending ourselves. Across the world today, just as we see how every nation is striving relentlessly to preserve its independence, . . . we also see how every nation is sensing its bond with a greater humanity. (“Hindu-bishwabidyalay”: A Hindu University; RRVB 18:483) Appropriately, the idea finds its most expansive form in an international forum. It is to a Japanese audience (“On Oriental Culture and Japan’s Mission”) that he expounds his doctrine of renaissance without using the term: There was a time in the Middle Age[s] when Latin was the common language of culture, but that was not the most glorious period of European civilization. There is no doubt that this classical language was the seed plot. . . . But then, when the shoots came up, the transplantation had to be done in the different soils of languages that were living. . . . And . . . they still have this marvellous illumination of a combined culture which now dominates the whole of the world. Rabindranath is arguing for a similar convergence of the cultures raised in the “different soils” of Asia. Bengal has already had an “awakening of the spirit”, to which the Japanese Okakura had contributed: this should be the prelude to a general interaction (EW 3:606). In “An Eastern University” (Creative Unity), he employs the term ‘renaissance’: “India has her renaissance. She is preparing to make her contribution to the world of the future” (EW 2:557). The particular or regional renaissance is necessary; but no less necessary that it should flow into a larger movement. Italy had its own rebirth, but it truly became a ‘renaissance’ when it flowed into the totality of the European upsurge. That is what engages Rabindranath, rather than the Italian or any other single manifestation. So too the renaissance in Bengal must find its place in a greater unity. The regional or national renaissance is subsumed in the liberation of minds across the world: collateral with the Bengal Renaissance is a flood-tide flowing from the French Revolution to

From Dante to Rabindranath 37 launch a great new era in Europe. In Italy, Mazzini and Garibaldi heralded this regeneration. Ancient India also had such moments of creative regeneration (“Arabinda Ghosh”; RRVB 31:114). The upsurge in Bengal before and during Rabindranath’s time is subsumed in this greater design. This is not a novel position: we saw it in a resurgent Bengal two generations before Rabindranath, as described in this chapter. Then too, people saw post-revolutionary France and its European aftermath as the most compelling reality of the times, and located a renaissance in 15th- and 16th-century Bengal. The exhilaration of their own age took on meaning from those contexts. Sometimes employing the trope of a rebirth, regeneration or awakening, they sought to reinvent culture by a transfer of knowledge and intellectual ethos, particularly a redefinition of the West by the East. For them, a renaissance was a phenomenon springing from their vital sensibility, not an academic abstraction. Rabindranath confirms that vision with the benefit of hindsight. In Rabindranath, the Bengal Renaissance attains closure by generating its historiographic paradigm from within itself, as conceived by its latest and most outstanding exponent. The Italian Renaissance and pre-naissance (as epitomized by Dante) find what place they can within this paradigm. It is not simply a matter of allusions, parallels or even organic transmission. Essentially, 19th-century Bengal discovers itself. It weaves Italy and Europe into the narrative: most notably, it incorporates the chief poet of Christendom. That is a formidable record of reception. To seek more might be extravagant; to settle for less, an impoverishment. References All translations from Bengali are my own unless otherwise indicated. Authors of Bengali works are listed by first name following usual Bengali practice. Bengali authors of English works are listed by surname, like all others. Akshay. 2014 (rpt. 2019). Akshaykumar Datta. Shreshtha prabandha. Edited by Muhammad Saiful Islam. Dhaka: Kathaprakash. Bandyopadhyay: see Hemchandra. Bangadarshan. 1975. Bangdarshan: nirbachita rachana sangraha. Edited by Rabindra Gupta. Kolkata: Charuprakash. John Beames (translated), “Bangiya sahitya samaj” (A Bengali Literary Society), 157–66. Shrikrishna Das, “Chaitanya”, 222–37. Bankim. 2014–7. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. Rachanabali. 6 vols. Edited by Alok Ray et al. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi. Biharilal. 1950 (rpt. 2017). Biharilal Chakrabarti. Saradamangal (1879). Edited by Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das. Kolkata: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat. Chakrabarti: see Biharilal. Chattopadhyay: see Bankim.

38  Sukanta Chaudhuri Chaudhuri. 2009. Chaudhuri, Sukanta. “L’Umanesimo e l’Orientalismo: la vita dopo la rinascita.” In Oriente e occidente nel Rinascimento, edited by Luisa Secchi Tarugi. Firenze: Franco Cesati, 2009. ———. 2010. Chaudhuri, Sukanta. “Humanism and Orientalism: Life after Rebirth.” In Renaissance Reborn, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri. New Delhi: DC Publishers. Dante. 1939 (rpt. 1971). Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. 3 vols. Translated by John D. Sinclair. London: Oxford University Press. Datta: see Akshay; Dutt; Michael. Debendra. 1912a. Debendranath Sen. Apurba shishumangal. Kolkata: Debendranath Sen. ———. 1912b. Debendranath Sen. Parijat-guchchha. Kolkata: Debendranath Sen. ———. 1912c. Debendranath Sen. Shephaliguchchha. Kolkata: Debendranath Sen. Derozio. 1923. Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian. Poems. Edited by F. B. Bradley-Birt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dutt. 1880. Dutt, Toru. A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields. New ed. London: C. Kegan Paul. Dutt. 1895. Dutt, Romesh Chunder. The Literature of Bengal. Revised ed. Kolkata: Thacker Spink. Dutt, Michael Madhusudan: see Michael. EW. 1994–2007. Rabindranath Tagore. The English Writings. 4 vols. Edited by Sisir Kumar Das and Nityapriya Ghosh. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Ghosh. 1948. Ghosh, J. C. Bengali Literature. London: Oxford University Press. ———. see also Kaliprasanna; Sankha. Goody. 2010. Goody, Jack. Renaissances: The One or the Many? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haraprasad. 1915. Haraprasad Shastri. “Bankimchandra Katalparay” (Bankimchandra in Katalpara). In Narayan. Baishakh, 1322; rpt. Haraprasad Shastri rachana-sangraha, Vol. 2, edited by Satyajit Chaudhuri et al. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshad [no date]. ———. 2004. Haraprasad Shastri. “Bangala sahitya: barttaman shatabdir” (Bengali Literature of the Current Century: 1881). In Bangla bhasha charcha: Bangadarshan theke sankalan, edited by Biswajit Ray. Kolkata: Mrittika. Hemchandra. 1953–4. Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay. Granthabali. 2 vols. Edited by Sajanikanta Das. Kolkata: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat. Each work or section is separately paginated. Jogindranath. 1925. Jogindranath Basu. Michael Madhusudan Datter jibancharit. Kolkata: Chuckerverrty, Chatterjee. Kaliprasanna. 1989. Kaliprasanna Ghosh. Trichinta. Edited by Arunkumar Mukhopadhyay. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshad. Kopf. 1969. Kopf, David. British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Macaulay. 1935. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. Speeches . . . With His Minute on Indian Education (1835). Edited by G. M. Young. London: Oxford University Press. Manasij. 2016. Manasij Majumdar. “Bangalir Europe-charcha – shilpakalay” (The Bengali’s Cultivation of Europe through Art). In Bangalir Europe charcha, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti and Anil Acharya, 126–57. Kolkata: Anushtup.

From Dante to Rabindranath 39 Michael. 1973. Michael Madhusudan Datta [Dutt]. Rachanabali. Edited by Ajitkumar Ghosh. Kolkata: Haraph Prakashani. Used for Meghnadbadh kabya. ———. 1974 (rpt. 1990). Michael Madhusudan Datta [Dutt]. Rachanabali. Revised ed. Edited by Kshetra Gupta. Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad. Used for all works other than Meghnadbadh kabya, including English writings and letters. Montague. 2008. “British Indian Literature” (1843). In Derozio Remembered, edited by Sakti Sadhan Mukhopadhyay, 81–93. Kolkata: Derozio Commemoration Committee. Rabindranath. 2006. Rabindranath Tagore. Relationships (Jogajog). Translated by Supriya Chaudhuri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. see also EW, RRVB. Ramendra. 1975–9. Ramendrasundar Trivedi. Rachanasamagra. 4 vols. Edited by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Kolkata: Granthamela. Rammohan. 1973. Rammohan Ray. Rachanabali. Edited by Ajitkumar Ghosh. Kolkata: Haraph Prakashani. Ray: see Rammohan. Richardson. 1840. Selections From the British Poets. Edited by David Lester Richardson. Kolkata: Committee of Public Instruction and Calcutta School Book Society. RRVB. 1939. Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore). Rabindra-rachanabali. 33+2 vols, in progress. Kolkata: Visva-Bharati. Sankha. 2002. Sankha Ghosh. “Dayeri theke” (From My Diary). Chitrak kabitapatrika 3: 3. Schwab. 1984. Schwab, Raymond. The Oriental Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press. Sen: see Debendra. Shastri: see Haraprasad; Shibnath. Shibnath. 2007. Shibnath Shastri. Ramtanu Lahiri o tatkalin bangasamaj (Ramtanu Lahiri and the Bengali Society of His Times: 1904), 2nd revised ed. Edited by Baridbaran Ghosh. Kolkata: New Age. Smith. 1879. Smith, George. The Life of Alexander Duff. New York: A.C. Armstrong. Tagore: see EW; Rabindranath; RRVB. Trivedi: see Ramendra. University. 1957. Hundred Years of the University of Calcutta. 2 vols. Kolkata: University of Calcutta. Vidyasagar. 1960. Prasanga Vidyasagar. Edited by Biman Basu. Kolkata: Bangiya Saksharata Prasar Samiti. Vivekananda. 2014. Swami Vivekananda. Bangla rachana sankalan. 2nd ed. Edited by Biswajit Ray. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi.

2 Rabindranath Tagore as Reflected in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers Luisa Prayer The intense relationship between Western art music of the early 20th century and Tagore’s poetry is testified by a large number of art songs written after 1914 by composers from many European as well as North American countries. Mostly set for voice and piano, these were based on his original texts in English or on translations in the main European languages (Coppola 1984; Sen 2008). Many of these compositions are today out of print and seldom available in music libraries, and in many cases, they have remained unpublished. Despite various factors hindering an exhaustive survey of Italian authors, it appears that Tagore was a favourite of Italian composers born between the 1870s and the 1910s. This is argued in the present study with reference to some of the most notable composers and their teachers and collaborators. In each case, an attempt has been made to highlight the specific path that led to Tagore’s poetry. The reasons for the success of Tagore’s poetry are sought in the network of cultural relations, including extra-musical ones, that characterized their work, as well as in individual inclinations. Tagore’s poetry arrived in Italy immediately after the Nobel Prize award in 1913 when translations of his poems appeared in various magazines. In 1914, the publisher Carabba brought out the first Italian translation of Gitanjali with a preface written by W.B. Yeats. It inaugurated a long series of titles which contributed greatly to the diffusion of Tagore’s works in Italy as did the popular character of the editorial format (Prayer 2014a). In academic and in other important cultural journals, a debate centring around the figure of the Bengali poet soon engaged scholars of Sanskrit or ancient philosophy and religion (Prayer 2014b). Since the late 19th century, Oriental Studies flourished in Italian cities with strong academic traditions, such as Turin, Milan, Bologna, Naples and Rome. The musical life in these cities was also very vibrant thanks to the presence of important opera houses and renowned conservatories. A  connection often existed between the milieu of Italian musicians who set Tagore’s lyrical compositions to music, and that of Oriental scholars: a combination of individual DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-4

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 41 inclination and cultural baggage provided the ground for some musicians’ encounter with Indian poetry. Tagore rose on the Italian music scene at a time when a heated confrontation was going on between traditionalists – staunch defenders of national melodramma – and modernizers, promoting the rebirth of Italy’s ‘golden age’ of instrumental tradition and the creation of new symphonic repertoires. The latter group looked to the German Lied and the modern French lyrique as models for a high genre of art song, the so-called lirica da camera, in which the careful choice of the text was an explicit reference to the contents of modern musical style. The illustrious examples of great conductors like Giuseppe Martucci (1856–1909) and Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957) largely contributed to spreading an awareness of international symphonic and operatic repertoires in early 20th-century Italy. Some composers consequently felt the need to study or acquire professional experience abroad. Thus, the generation of Respighi, Casella, Alfano, all of whom took an interest in Tagore’s poetry, gave a significant impetus to the renewal of Italian music. This chapter has seven sections, each of which deals with a specific composer – Alfredo Casella, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ottorino Respighi, Giorgio Federico Ghedini, Franco Alfano, Nino Rota and Virgilio Mortari. The years mentioned in the section titles point to their composition of ‘Tagorean songs’, highlighting a remarkable continuity in their production during the 1910s and 1920s. 1915: Alfredo Casella The first collection of songs composed by an Italian musician on texts by Tagore was L’Adieu à la vie (Farewell to life) by Alfredo Casella, based on André Gide’s French translation of Gitanjali. The year of composition, 1915, marks a significant moment in Casella’s artistic career, coinciding with his farewell to Paris and return to Italy. A child-prodigy pianist, the Turin-born Casella (1883–1947) was advised to study music in Paris by Giuseppe Martucci.1 In Paris, where he arrived at the age of thirteen, he was exposed to momentous changes and experimentation in music and culture. He attended the premieres of pioneering works such as Claude Debussy’s Trois Nocturnes (1900) and Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and Igor Strawinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring, 1913), which was to take Paris by the storm. At the same time, Casella passionately studied the works of the greatest living composers from Vienna, like Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) and the revolutionary Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), the performance of whose works Casella himself promoted in Paris and later in Italy. Thanks to his critical acuity, he acquired a deep awareness of the contemporary musical and artistic scene, with which he placed himself in a dialectical relationship as a composer.

42  Luisa Prayer A talented organizer, Casella was also a very active member of music societies and intellectual circles, where he interacted with famous writers and painters. Not surprisingly, given the high cultural profile of his personality, he was among the first composers in France, if not in Europe, to approach Tagore’s poetry. This happened soon after the French poet and novelist, André Gide (1869–1951), whom he knew personally, published his translation of Gitanjali in 1914. L’Adieu à la vie: Quatre lyriques funèbres2 was composed in 1915, the war year that brought him back to Italy, and can be considered the summa of his diverse and enriching twenty years in Paris. During the painful years of World War I, Casella found in Tagore an inspiration for his own deep reflection upon the theme of death. At the same time, the choice of the Indian poet allowed him to claim his belonging to a European avant-garde that looked up to Debussy, Mahler, Schönberg and Strawinsky as its models. For his orchestra song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), premiered in Vienna in 1909, Mahler selected six songs from Hans Bethge’s Die Chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute, 1907).3 Through the ancient poetry of the Far East, he aimed at projecting the suffering of mankind on a timeless, universal horizon. Schönberg, on his part, soon after completing Pierrot Lunaire,4 sketched a symphony on texts by Tagore, Richard Dehmel and the Bible, a work that remained unfinished. Tagore’s inspiration travelled from Schönberg to Casella, and shortly afterwards to another Viennese, Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871–1942).5 His Lyrische Symphonie op. 21 (1918) on seven poems from The Gardener was inspired by Mahler’s Lied von der Erde. In Casella’s and Zemlinsky’s Expressionist song cycles, however, the poetry of Tagore – the first living poet of the East ever to enlighten the contemporary artistic scene of the West – becomes a powerful expression of the spiritual horizon of present times. Casella’s work shows an outstanding complexity: the synchrony of multiple patterns (as in Debussy and Strawinsky) generates complex harmonies – polymodal and polytonal, rich in dissonances, at times close to atonality, like in Schönberg. Measuring himself with the work of composers of such magnitude meant, for him, an extraordinary creative and intellectual engagement which was, at the same time, a reflection of his deep ethical commitment. Casella rearranged Tagore’s four poems in a mournful series of songs along a new and compelling narrative line, teleologically articulated in four stages, namely expectation, dispossession, journey and Orphic ecstasy (Fontanelli 2017, 419).6 Casella performed the Tagorean cycle in a concert held in Rome on 29 December 1916. The composition was harshly criticized by the traditionalist camp and the publishing house Ricordi refused to publish it.7 In a significant passage of his critical edition of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas,8 which he was working on in that period, Casella argued

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 43 that Gitanjali’s last poem could be seen as an ideal gloss to the sublime Arietta of Beethoven’s last Sonata op. 111: The character of this wonderfully varied theme can be summed up in a few words: sweetness, quiet, otherworldly happiness. And it seems to me that the strange light – at the same time dazzling and mysterious – which illuminates this Arietta imposes a compelling comparison with the ending of that other admirable poem: Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. Let the student read once more the last poem of that book, and in the ‘Nirvana’ of the Indian poet-philosopher he will find the best aesthetic and humane commentary to this sublime piece of music.9 What is striking is how Tagore continued to play a role in Casella’s aesthetic thought, well beyond L’Adieu. In his exegesis of the movement which Beethoven had placed at the conclusion of the last of his piano sonatas, Casella was guided by the word of a poet who remained as his travelling companion even in the happy moment when peace was restored. In January 1923, six years after the unfortunate Roman premiere, Casella revived the Tagore cycle – this time with greater success – for a concert in Milan (Annese 2021, 263), where the cultural context was more internationally oriented. Finally, on the eve of Tagore’s visit to Italy in 1926 (Prayer 2014a, 427–30), he rearranged L’Adieu for voice and sixteen instruments, perhaps in the hope that current events could help save a work of high artistic significance from oblivion. 1916: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco In 1916, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) composed Il Bufalo (The buffalo) and Il Sogno (The dream), two songs based on poems from Tagore’s The Gardener.10 Castelnuovo-Tedesco hailed from a wellconnected Jewish family which belonged to the educated bourgeoisie of Florence.11 He studied with the influential Maestro Ildebrando Pizzetti at the Florence Conservatory from 1912 to 1918,12 and through him came into contact with the circle of a prominent cultural magazine, La Voce (1908–1916), which had a keen interest in foreign literary and artistic movements. In his autobiography, Castelnuovo-Tedesco recalls how his decision to compose songs based on Tagore was influenced by Elisa Milani, a young woman with whom he shared a passion for literature and music: We used to read a lot at that time, and talked about literature, religion, philosophy. Elisa loved Tolstoy, Renan, Tagore (whom we considered a great poet then) and, in music (since she was also very musical . . .), Bach and Beethoven. . . . For Elisa (‘für Elise’ – as in Beethoven’s album leaf)

44  Luisa Prayer in 1917 I composed three songs based on her mother’s poems (Dolcina’s Book) and two based on Rabindranath Tagore’s Gardener (which I later orchestrated). But they have remained unpublished (and were, after all, just ‘album leaves’). (Castelnuovo-Tedesco 2005, 122) In this passage, Castelnuovo-Tedesco describes his encounters with Elisa who, like him, was a passionate reader animated by reflections on religion and philosophy. Such an interest perfectly corresponds to their predilection for two composers whose religious (Bach) and philosophical (Beethoven) dimensions were universally recognized. In this respect, the discovery of Tagore, whom they saw as a ‘great poet’ at that time, may have stimulated their debates not only from a literary point of view. Also interesting is the reference to Beethoven’s famous piano piece Für Elise (For Elise), not only because those songs were dedicated to Elisa, his muse and inspirer. In tune with the Beethovenian bagatella, in fact, the Italian composer strove to concentrate his musical inspiration within the circumscribed spaceframe of an ‘album leaf’ – whereby ‘album’ is the place where memories are collected. These two brief compositions of Castelnuovo-Tedesco were to become, over a long distance of time and space, two leaves in the album from which he drew recollections for his autobiography. He made hand copies of them in California in 1962 while revising his memoirs.13 There was much more to remember: we learn that during his Tagorean period, he put to music some poems of Elisa’s mother, Laura Milani Comparetti, who had passed away three years earlier. The daughter of Domenico Comparetti, a philologist at the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence, Laura, was married to Luigi Adriano Milani, a former student of her father who became director of the Archaeological Museum of Florence in 1882. This cultural milieu also saw a flourishing of Indian studies thanks mainly to the initiative of Angelo De Gubernatis, a professor of Sanskrit from 1863 to 1891 at the same Regio Istituto where Elisa’s father was his student.14 In 1892, the directorship of the Archaeological Museum went to Paolo Emilio Pavolini, who had done important research work with Comparetti on Finnish philology. Pavolini, a tireless scholar of foreign literatures – he also edited anthologies of ancient Indian poetry15 – was among the first Italian intellectuals to comment on the award of the Nobel Prize to ‘an Indian poet’ in the Florentine magazine Il Marzocco in November  1913.16 Personal networks and the intense relationships of Florence with Indian culture thus prepared the young Mario and Elisa to receive Tagore’s poetry with understanding and sensitivity. For his Tagorean songs, Castelnuovo-Tedesco created a complex and stratified writing, which found a natural development in the subsequent

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 45 orchestral version. In an extremely unconventional way, music follows the text with extreme fluidity, and shifts to harmonies around different tonal centres, almost suggesting the idea that Tagore’s poetry requires the exploration of new forms of expressive freedom (and, in turn, satisfies that need), descending from the primaeval love relationship with Nature.17 As mentioned further, in 1922, Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a review for Franco Alfano’s La leggenda di Sakuntala. His acute observations on Alfano’s adherence to poetic sources reflect a familiarity with ancient Indian literature as well. The Indian season of Mario and Elisa, thus, was in many ways an enriching experience. 1917: Ottorino Respighi Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) was the most prominent Italian composer of symphonic music of his generation: his Trilogia romana (Roman trilogy, 1916–28), to mention just one of his renowned works, regularly features in symphonic concerts and in the international discography to this day. Respighi, a professional violin and viola player, was also an expert pianist in the chamber and vocal repertoire to which he devoted much creative energy. After prolonged periods of stay in Russia and Germany, he undertook intense concert activity as a pianist. From 1911, he collaborated with the Turin-born singer, Chiarina Fino Savio, and also from 1921 with his wife, the Roman composer and singer Elsa Olivieri Sangiacomo. Both the singers also became Respighi’s cultural advisers and partners in social networking. Chiarina Fino Savio first interpreted in March 1917 Respighi’s only song based on a text by Tagore, La fine (The end), the last of the five-song set Cinque Liriche. Several details deserve special attention here. The collection Cinque liriche includes two songs by Percy B. Shelley, a poet who features in Respighi’s other collections as well, and two by Jacques de Fersen in French, the language in which many of his other songs are composed. Tagore stands out as rather an obvious exception to Respighi’s usual poetic preferences. Chronologically, the composition and premiere of Respighi’s La fine occurred less than three months after Casella’s L’Adieu à la vie was performed in Rome where both Casella and Respighi were professors at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. Moreover, the theme of death, or detachment, runs throughout the collection and is particularly evident in Tagore’s text. The second song, based on Shelley’s A Dirge, takes the title Canto funebre (Funeral song) in Respighi’s cycle, a rather explicit reference to the term Lyrique funèbre that Casella had used. Finally, the rather unusual length of the five songs is another sign of Respighi’s special compositional commitment. All these elements seem to point to Respighi’s dialectical relationship with Casella. Considering the great difference in their approach to modernity,

46  Luisa Prayer with Respighi placing himself in a line of continuity with musical tradition, one might suppose the not-too-disguised intention on his part of marking a distance. As mentioned earlier, Casella’s arrival in Rome was followed by significant repercussions and controversies in a milieu where the problem of modernity was often sought to be solved by claiming more space for the instrumental repertoire, and especially by exalting, in a ‘national’ perspective, the ancient and magnificent instrumental traditions of the Italian 18th century. Respighi had initially joined Casella’s innovative associative projects aimed at a greater dissemination of foreign instrumental music in Italy, and of Italian music at home and abroad,18 but later, the two musicians took opposite sides.19 With respect to Tagore’s popularity among Italian musicians, however, Respighi’s approach (slightly preceding Alfano’s) may have also served the purpose of a reconciliation with those who would identify Tagore as the poet of the anti-traditionalist avant-garde. It is no coincidence that soon after 1917, several musicians who had studied at the Conservatory of Bologna (Respighi’s hometown, from where he moved to Rome in 1913) and had interacted with him in the city’s musical circles composed Tagorean songs. Among these were Guglielmo Zuelli (1859–1941), Alfonso Gandino (1878– 1940), Giacomo Benvenuti (1885–1943) and Vincenzo Davico (1889– 1968). Franco Alfano would reach out to Indian poetry through other ways, as illustrated below, yet it is worth remembering that he was also in Bologna from 1916 to 1923 as a professor and director of the Conservatory. 1919: Giorgio Federico Ghedini While mentioning the musical scene in Bologna, one should also refer to the contribution made by Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965) with his Tre liriche tagoriane, a set of three songs composed in 1919.20 Born in Cuneo, a small town in Piedmont, Ghedini studied in Turin with Giovanni Cravero, Casella’s teacher, and graduated in composition in Bologna in 1911. He later returned to Turin, where he remained until 1938 and was engaged both with the productions of the Teatro Regio and as a teacher of composition.21 Turin, one of the most modern and cultured cities in Italy,22 was visited by Tagore during his Italian tour of 1926. Ghedini went through different phases in his trajectory as a composer, from an initial acceptance of Pizzetti’s and Malipiero’s modernist neoclassicism, to dodecaphonic and serial music in the 1940s, and back to tonal models during the last decade of his life. A Bach enthusiast, he composed a large number of works of sacred music. An intense spiritual inspiration runs through his non-sacred works as well, such as his famous Concerto dell’Albatro (The albatross concerto) for narrator, piano, violin, cello and orchestra (1945), based on an episode in Melville’s Moby Dick. His youthful interest

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 47 in Tagore was perhaps derived from this side of his personality, very much inclined to religious thought. The ragged and tired wayfarer in Tagore’s poems, invoking night rest and a new life from the divinity, would certainly suit a Christian prayer as well. As has been observed, the musician in Ghedini may have been attracted not only by a thematic affinity but also by a poetic and stylistic affinity. The “gentleness and delicacy of tones, the . . . images of surprising clarity and effectiveness” found in Tagore may correspond to “a world of sounds in search of the most direct efficacy through a simple, yet meaningful language” (Salvetti 1966, 18). 1919–1948: Franco Alfano The author of twenty-six songs based on Tagore’s texts composed between 1919 and 1948, Franco Alfano (1876–1954) was the only Italian composer whose engagement with Tagore was not just a temporary episode but continued uninterruptedly over three decades. The catalogue of his Tagorean songs, the most conspicuous in Europe, includes eleven songs based on poems from Gitanjali and fifteen from The Gardener.23 They were composed over a span of thirty years right to the end of his life as a composer, and contributed significantly to Tagore’s continued presence in the Italian musical world. His interest in Tagore, in fact, was a part of his broader engagement with Indian literature as testified by his celebrated opera La leggenda di Sakuntala. Tre atti da Kalidasa (The legend of Sakuntala, three acts from Kalidasa). It may be interesting here to refer to the genesis of this opera, which was first staged with great success in Bologna on 10 December 1921. More than a hundred years after the first English translation by Sir William Jones in 1789, the play by Kalidasa was considered in Europe to be the best expression of the Indian poetic and mythological world and the first to have achieved a wide penetration in the Western cultural world (Thapar 2001). The countless translations (over forty-six in twelve languages) were followed by several musical compositions.24 Furthermore, legends and stories with an Indian setting were frequent in late 19th-century French opera.25 Such works were probably known to Alfano who had studied in Leipzig from 1895, and from there moved to Paris in 1899–1902. According to Alfano, the idea of setting the Sakuntala legend to music had been suggested to him by his friend and mentor, the writer and theatre and music critic Giovanni Pozza (Gherardi 1999, 92). Composing both libretto and music took him almost seven years. Those were mournful years for Alfano: he lost his friend Pozza in 1914, and soon after his son Herbert died on the war front. This prolonged period of creation was the outcome of Alfano’s intention to make an in-depth study of the narrative and propose his own

48  Luisa Prayer interpretation. After the first performance of Alfano’s Sakuntala in Bologna in 1922, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a critical review in which he expressed (and rightly so, as we will see) his perplexity about the finale of the opera: “I don’t know,” he observed, “how far this idea of self-​​sacrifice, this necessity of sorrow is actually faithful to the Indian spirit. On the contrary, it seems to me a purely Western notion” (cit. Gherardi 1999, 100). In fact, Alfano’s libretto interpolates Kalidasa’s play with excerpts from Meghaduta and episodes from the Mahabharata (Waterhouse 1999, 539).26 Alfano thus created an expanded version of the story in which Sakuntala’s figure is highly dramatized and, in the end, transfigured. The comic element was entirely removed, while the tragic ending, Alfano’s own addition, presented the Love and Death theme that had characterized the Romantic and its successive articulations (Gherardi 1999, 101; Waterhouse 1999, 540), but was also the expression of an individual psychological condition. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was therefore right in his doubts regarding Alfano’s adherence to the ‘Indian spirit’. On the other hand, this was not due to Alfano’s superficial reading of the myth. Through his complex re-creation he aimed at representing – even at the cost of altering the plot – what he saw as a profound correspondence between Indian poetry and spirituality and his own.27 A witness to the revolutionary process by which contemporary Europe was forever widening its cultural borders, Alfano belonged to a group of thinkers and artists who searched for traces of the universal and eternal human nature in distant cultures, ennobled by their ancient origins.28 In that research, it may be argued, we find the deep motivations of his prolonged relationship with the poetry of Tagore as permeated by the spirit of an ancient wisdom. As pointed out by Rino Maione, heir and curator of Franco Alfano’s musical legacy, Tagore’s poetics is hardly irreconcilable with Alfano’s. . . . The art of both shows the same sensual atmosphere of eros as in [the Bible’s] Song of Songs, an eros that is often found in the soul and language of mystics of all times and places: an exaltation of earthly love in the transcendent, sensitive search for the divine. (Maione 1999, 232–33) Whatever the merits of this critical interpretation of Tagore’s poetry, what concerns us here is that, according to Maione, this is what Tagore meant for Alfano. Even the biographical episode that Alfano placed at the origin of his approach to Tagore seems to underline another possible aspect of the transfiguration of Sakuntala, that wonderful creature destined to die, and whose last manifestation, in the finale of the opera, is entrusted to her

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 49 voice alone. Alfano stated that in the Conservatory of Bologna, he once happened to hear one of the most beautiful mezzo-soprano voices that could ever be heard. This was Maria Pedrazzi, a very young musician, a magnificent pianist, a complete artist (whose life was, alas, very short)29 to whom I owe the growth in me of a vocation for lirica da camera. And as I was then finishing my opera Sakuntala and was completely engrossed in the mysterious Bengali poetry,30 India again, with Tagore, became the source of the greatest number of my short musical poems. (cit. Maione 1999, 236–37) The sad fate of this delicate young lady, transfigured in memory, is perhaps partly reflected in the heroine of the opera. We can assume, then, that through the composition of those Tagorean songs, an imaginary dialogue with his Muse was continuing over time. Significantly, Alfano’s favourite poems were those in which questions are asked of an undefined interlocutor and remain unanswered. The voice-and-piano bilinear organization of the songs did not prevent Alfano, who often deployed grandiose means of expression in his orchestral works, from pursuing complex and daring musical solutions. Tonal structures were concealed through an accentuated chromatism, at times almost bordering with atonality (Sanguinetti 1999). Diatonism in the vocal part is contrasted by complex harmonies in the piano part, variously designed in each composition, and tonally differentiated through a stratified writing which exploits the entire extension of the keyboard. In the piano, the musician’s ‘word’ vibrates and recreates the emotional and intellectual refractions of the Tagorean verse. Alfano’s long composing trajectory ended with Tagore. His last work was an orchestral rearrangement of the song Luce (Light), an ecstatic hymn to life.31 It might be pertinent here to refer to the songs composed between 1919 and 1922 by a small group of musicians born and trained in Naples, Alfano’s birthplace: Mario Pilati (1903–1938), Mario Barbieri (1888–1968) and Guido Laccetti (1879–1943). Leopoldo Mugnone’s (1858–1941) La mia canzone avvolge la sua musica attorno a te,32 a composition for voice and violin, probably belongs to the same period. 1922–1924: Nino Rota Giovanni (Nino) Rota (1911–1979) is the youngest among the Tagorean composers analysed in this chapter.33 A child prodigy composer, he authored six songs based on Tagore’s texts over a fairly long period (1922–1924).34

50  Luisa Prayer Years later, as he selected five of the twenty-one songs he had composed between 1921 and 1938 for a Ricordi publication, he included three of his Tagorean compositions – a sign of the special consideration (artistic, personal or philosophical) in which he held those early efforts. To understand why and how the young Rota came to Tagore, one has of course to refer to the presence of Tagore and Indian culture in Milan, where he spent his early years. But this encounter may have also stemmed from Rota’s innate speculative inclination, which manifested itself quite precociously. As shown later, the meeting with Tagore had a lasting impact on Rota’s progress towards artistic maturity. Nino Rota was born into a family of musicians. His cousin Maria Rota (1894–1961) was a successful soprano when Nino made his debut as a composer at the age of only eight. Maria, an exclusive interpreter of art songs, became his first ‘patron’.35 In 1921, she gifted him with a small album in which he would copy and collect his songs. Nino had just joined the Conservatory of Milan, where he took initial lessons in composition from Giacomo Orefice (1865–1922). Significantly, Orefice was the author of Sette Liriche dal Giardiniere di Tagore (Seven songs from The Gardener) and although these were only published posthumously in 1955, his assiduous student Nino may have heard of them directly from him.36 Orefice also collaborated on several occasions with Angiolo Orvieto (1869–1967), who was related to his wife, Lucia Cantoni. Orvieto, a poet, writer, publisher and traveller, co-founded the prominent literary magazine Il Marzocco in Florence in 1896.37 Another relation, Lina Orefice Cantoni (Orefice’s sister-in-law), is known to have composed a collection of four melodramas for narrator and piano titled Quattro poemetti d’amore su parole di Rabindranath Tagore (Four short love poems on lyrics by Tagore) published in Milan in 1920 (Salis 2012, 33; Bassani 2020).38 Nino Rota, who composed his first Tagorean song in September 1922, may have also been prompted by his cousin Maria as she was probably aware of the Tagore-based compositions by Respighi (1917) and Alfano (1919). And if, as it has been suggested, Maria’s talent as a singer was ‘discovered’ by Gabriele D’Annunzio (Di Cintio 2014, 25), then the latter may have also played a role in this.39 Another important piece can be added to this mosaic of correspondences: in the summer months when eleven-year-old Rota composed Quando tu sollevi la lampada al Cielo (When you raise the lamp to the sky), he also embarked on a project of larger proportions, namely Infanzia di San Giovanni Battista (The childhood of St. John the Baptist), an oratorio for four solo voices, choir and orchestra. It was soon completed and premiered in Milan in April 1923. The libretto of the oratorio was written and presented to the young Nino by Silvio Pagani, a friend of the Rotas (Lazzaro 2012, 3–4). Pagani, an original thinker who had developed a system of thought

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 51 called Antivita (Anti-life, Pagani 1919), combined his philosophical and poetic inclinations with a keen interest in Indian literature. In 1912, he wrote Asht’avakragita, o Il canto di Asht’avakra, a reduction in verse of the poem Ashtavakra-Gita which the illustrious Sanskritist Carlo Giussani had translated into Italian in 1868. Pagani, therefore, may have also contributed his part to familiarizing Nino with Indian poetry. Rota resumed the composition of Tagorean songs in the summer of 1923,40 and by the end of 1924 had completed six songs. From a musical point of view, these compositions are indeed exceptional. Their variety shows the harmonious growth of the child prodigy as well as his wellthought-out approach to the text. It should also be emphasized that for Rota, the musical reflection on Tagore’s poetry inaugurated a remarkable series of ventures in the philosophical, spiritual and religious fields. Despite pressing duties connected with musical studies and early professional commitments, Rota graduated in Literature in Milan in 1936, where he studied with the philosopher Antonio Banfi (1886–1957) and took no less than two Sanskrit exams out of choice (Vecchio 2012, 118). Meanwhile, he had approached alchemical-hermetic thought and entered a life-long friendship with two important representatives of the Italian Hermetic and Pythagorean circles, Michele Cianciulli and Vincenzo (Vinci) Verginelli. Verginelli later wrote librettos for some of his sacred music works and for the opera La lampada di Aladino (Aladdin’s lamp) and helped Rota in his search for ancient books on mysticism and alchemy. Over the years, they acquired a remarkable collection which was then donated in 1984 to Italy’s prestigious institution, Accademia dei Lincei. In view of this pursuit of a mystical-philosophical interest which continued throughout his life, it can be assumed that for Rota, in addition to the stimuli of his cultural environment and despite his very young age, it was the genuine inclination of his nature that led him to the poetry of Tagore. A final, unexpected Tagorean trace related to Rota may be worth mentioning here. The Fondo Nino Rota of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice holds a volume of Tagore’s songs coming from his library, where some of Tagore’s original Bengali songs are transcribed in Western musical notation (Bake 1935). Published around the period of his Sanskrit studies at the University of Milan, the book attests to Rota’s interest in questions concerning the strictly musical sphere and points to the extended field of his encounter with Tagore. 1924: Virgilio Mortari In the early months of 1924, when still a student at the Conservatory of Milan, Virgilio Mortari (1902–1993) composed the collection Tre liriche based on poems from The Gardener.41 Mortari, who had participated in

52  Luisa Prayer the second phase of musical Futurism in 1921–23,42 gave vent, over the following years, to an ironic and caricatural vein, or a markedly popular one, in his compositions.43 In his Tagorean set, however, we find an extremely delicate expression of this poetics. The three songs form a unit articulated over three moments. Rhythmic elements are repeated across the songs in a lulling mode, while the voice oscillates on intervals of a third – alternatively major and minor – or of a second. The melody unfolds within the range of a sixth major, carrying a vaguely oriental flavour and reminiscent, at the same time, of ancient lullabies in Italy’s popular tradition.44 The simple accompaniment sets up modal harmonies, and only rarely imitates the melodic line of the song. This leaves scope for the full expression of different emotional inflexions in the text. The interpretation follows agogic indications such as dolce e infantile, con anima, con entusiasmo, cullando, abbandono (respectively, sweet and childish, with soul, with enthusiasm, lulling, with abandonment). Mortari’s was an original musical rendering of Tagore. He applied to the Bengali poet certain stylized popular inflexions which other beloved musicians of the time were using in their rediscovery of 13th- and 14th-century Italian poets, that is, those who had abandoned Latin for the vernacular.45 As in those forerunners of the great Dante and Petrarch, Mortari recognized in Tagore – the representative of the East that was projecting itself into modernity – an ability to give voice to humanity in its virginal state. To Mortari, this made his poetry ever more true and authentic. Conclusion In the variegated musical and cultural scenario outlined in this chapter, the choice of Tagore’s poems as the basis for musical compositions can be referred to a wide range of possibilities. For some, like Casella, it signified the belonging to an avant-garde musical environment, and for others, like Respighi, its rejection. A cultural context permeated by ancient Indian literature often exerted its marked influence, as in the cases of CastelnuovoTedesco and Orefice. This was at times supported by personal inclination towards philosophy, as in Rota, or religion, as in Ghedini, while in Alfano, we have a sort of identification with Tagore as the poet of a religion of life and beauty. After World War II, the musical scene was to undergo epochal changes. In Italy, the lirica da camera for voice and piano rapidly declined. Tagorean influences, however, continued to emerge in the works of composers of the current Italian avant-garde, such as Nell’ombra della tua notte (In the shadow of your night, 1988), a four-voice a cappella choir piece by Armando Gentilucci (1939–1989), and Offrande II (1993), for three solo

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 53 voices, percussions and symphonic orchestra by Ivan Vandor (1932–2020) based on texts from Tagore, the Bhagavadgita, Tilopa and Vandor. Each of these cases deserves a deeper illustration than was possible within the limited scope of this chapter. Yet the multi-sided analysis presented here, combining biography, cultural history and musical analysis, clearly shows that Tagore was in many different ways a dominant source of inspiration for Italian musicians in the crucial years between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, a period when momentous changes determined the evolution of their art and, in general, of the cultural horizon of Italy and Europe. Notes 1 On Casella’s life and times, see his autobiography: Casella 1941. 2 The title was drawn from Gide’s Introduction, where ‘farewell to life’ is described as one of the main themes running through the collection. According to Gide, “le chant est ici celui de l’âme même, asexuée” (here the singing is that of the ungendered soul itself, Gide 1914, xviii–xix). The four poems are: O Toi, suprême accomplissement de la vie (Gitanjali no. 91 “O thou last fulfilment of life”), Mort, ta servante, est à ma porte (no. 86 “Death, thy servant, is at my door”), A cette heure du départ (no. 94 “At this time of my parting”) and Dans une salutation supreme (no. 103 “In one salutation to thee”). 3 Bethge rewrote some 7th- and 8th-century Chinese poems which had previously been translated from Chinese into German. 4 Arnold Schönberg, Pierrot lunaire op. 21 (1912) for reciter, piano, flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin (doubling viola) and cello. Schönberg’s new technique of Sprechgesang (spoken singing) is a declamation, a hallucinatory intonation, rather than vocal music in a traditional sense. Schönberg’s Pierrot may have influenced the French composer Paul Durey in his L’Offrande lyrique, 1914 (Sen 2008, 1112–13). 5 Zemlinsky considered himself Schönberg’s only teacher on account of his lessons in counterpoint. 6 According to Sen (2008, 1121–25), a similar process of text ordering can be found in Szymanowsky’s Four Songs op. 41 (1918) and in Zemlinsky’s Lyrical Symphony in Seven Songs op. 18 (1926). 7 The set was published in 1921 by Chester in London. 8 Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonate per pianoforte. Nuova edizione critica, riveduta e corretta da Alfredo Casella, 3 vols. (1919–20). 9 Cit. in Fontanelli 2017, 461, fn. 121. Fontanelli argues that in Beethoven’s piece Casella “recognized Tagore’s salutation suprême, the extreme song of the soul bidding farewell to life, extinguishing itself within the cosmic mystery” (ibid.). All translations from Italian in this chapter are mine. 10 A hand-written copy by the author (1962) and a re-arrangement for orchestra (1917) are kept at the Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington DC, The Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Papers, Box Folder 91/5, Due Liriche dal “Giardiniere” di RabindraNath [sic] Tagore: I. (Nr. 78) Il Bufalo (12 Oct. 1916); II. (Nr. 68) Il Sogno, dtd. 27–28 October 1916. I am grateful to Ms Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco for providing me with scanned copies of both versions of the two songs, which are still unpublished.

54  Luisa Prayer 11 See his autobiography (Castelnuovo-Tedesco 2005, written between 1942 and 1966), and De Santis 2015. 12 Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) was a leading exponent of that “process of generalized transformation that had made lirica a refined, culturally committed genre, averse to the gratuitous display of power or vocal acrobatics, and rather keen on the possibilities of reading, interpretation and musical contextualization of poetic texts endowed with a strong authorial status” (De Santis 2015, 3). 13 Castelnuovo-Tedesco went into voluntary exile in the US after Italy introduced anti-Jewish laws in 1938. 14 In Florence De Gubernatis, among other things, established the Indian Museum (1866) and organized the International Congress of Orientalists (1878) which included an international exhibition of oriental art (Lowndes Vicente 2012). 15 Crestomazia del Ramayana (1985) e Mahabharata. Episodi scelti e tradotti, collegati col racconto dell’intero poema (1902). 16 Cit. in Prayer 2014a, 424–25. 17 The first song, Il Bufalo, is not framed in a single tonal area, as convention would have it. It begins on C major and concludes on A flat major. The second song, Il Sogno, ends with a chord that is coloured by the dissonance of a note added in pianissimo (ppp), barely audible, which hints at a dreamlike atmosphere of restlessness and suspended expectation. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Il Bufalo may have been influenced by Casella’s piece Il Bove (The ox, 1913), based on a text by the Italian Nobel laureate Giosuè Carducci. Both compositions express love for an animal living in perfect harmony with Nature. 18 Casella founded the National Society of Music in 1917 and soon after the National Society of Modern Music. Later, he joined the composer Gianfrancesco Malipiero to establish the Corporation of New Music, chaired by Gabriele D’Annunzio (1923). 19 Respighi, who in 1910 had participated with Pizzetti in “modernist” initiatives promoted by Malipiero in Bologna, became over time, perhaps in spite of himself, the flagship composer of the traditionalists. In 1932, ten years after the establishment of the fascist regime, Respighi was asked to be the first signatory of the Manifesto of Italian musicians for the tradition of 19th-century Romantic art, an extremely reactionary document whose main targets were Casella and Malipiero. 20 One of the three songs, Perché il giorno è finito (Gitanjali no. 24 “If the day is done”), was published in 1919. Manuscript copies of the other two (dtd. 1919 as well), Se taci riempirò il mio cuore del tuo silenzio and Luce, luce mia, luce che illumini il mondo (Gitanjali nos. 19: “If thou speakest not”, and no. 57 “Light, my light, the world-filling light” respectively), are kept in the Library of the Conservatory of Turin, MS.II.258 a-b. I am indebted to Dr Giuliana Maccaroni and Dr Linda Govi for this information. 21 In 1941, he moved to Milan, where he became the director of the Conservatory and a renowned professor of composition: among his students were the noted composers Luciano Berio and Niccolò Castiglioni and the conductor Claudio Abbado. 22 Turin had an important centre of Sanskrit studies at the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori, which produced pioneering works like Gaspare Gorresio’s translation in verse of the Ramayana and Giovanni Flechia’s Sanskrit grammar. 23 These are: Tre poemi di Rabindranath Tagore (1919); Non partire, amore mio (no. 6 in Sei Liriche op. 32, 1922); Tre Liriche di Tagore op. 42 (1929); Nuove

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 55 liriche tagoriane op. 57 (1935); Due Liriche di Tagore (unpublished [1944]); nos. 1–6 in Sette Liriche op. 70 (1944); Cinque nuove Liriche tagoriane op. 73 (1948); Luce op. 74 (1948); Il giorno non è più (no. 2 in Due Liriche op. 75, 1948). All were composed for voice and piano (except Il giorno non è più for voice, cello and piano), and some also had a version for voice and orchestra. For the dating, see Maione 1999, 393. 24 For instance, those by Karl von Perfall (1853), Ernest Reyer (1858), Karl Goldmark (1865), Philipp Scharwenka and Felix Weingartner (1884). 25 For instance, Pêcheurs de perles (1863) by Georges Bizet, Lakmé (1883) by Leo Delibes, Roi de Lahore (1877) by Jules Massenet. Also worth mentioning is the monumental sculpture Sakountala by Camille Claudel (1888, Salon des Artistes Françaises). Albert Roussel’s Padmâvatî, first staged in 1923, was the first European opera to use original Indian musical motifs which he had collected during a tour of Rajasthan. 26 All these works had been translated into Italian: Sakuntala by A. Marazzi (1872, but Alfano might have also accessed different versions in French or German), Meghaduta by G. Morici (1891) and Mahabharata by Pavolini (see earlier). On Italian translations of Kalidasa’s works, see Della Casa 1955. 27 In Alfano, Sakuntala’s voice, the manifestation of a supernatural world, accompanies the epiphany and the return of the son. She forgives the king, but this forgiveness is no longer the all-human forgiveness that Sakuntala grants to her lover in the Mahabharata. Here, in the solemnity of the finale, the supernatural element, that is, the voice coming from a non-real dimension, or the light flooding the child, imparts a quasi-religious value to that forgiveness, pointing to a shared dimension of Indian and Christian spirituality. 28 Alfano’s music reflects the most recent experiences of Italian Opera, and it is no coincidence that Toscanini considered him a suitable composer to complete Giacomo Puccini’s unfinished Turandot (1924). Critics have also found interesting affinities between his Sakuntala and Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard Strauss (staged in 1919), a work similarly underpinned by a complex web of symbols (the setting, though historically or geographically undefined, shows clear references to Indian culture) and a high emotional intensity (Gherardi 1999, 105). 29 She died of Spanish flu in 1918, aged 24. 30 Alfano thus seemed to equate Bengali and Indian poetry. 31 Gitanjali no. 57 “Light, my light, the world-filling light”. 32 The Crescent Moon no. 38, “This song of mine will wind its music around you”. 33 Rota studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti in Milan from 1924, Alfredo Casella in Rome from 1927 and Rosario Scalero in Philadelphia from 1930. Active in the field of art music as a composer and a teacher, he became one of the most celebrated and internationally awarded authors of film music. He worked with masters of Italian cinema such as Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli, and American director Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather. 34 1. Quando tu sollevi la lampada al cielo (1922); 2. Perché si spense la lampada?, 3. Io cesserò il mio canto, 4. Il richiamo for voice and string quintet or piano, (1923); 5. Ascolta o cuore, 6. Illumina tu o fuoco (1924). Nos. 1, 3 and 5 were included in a collection of five pieces published in 1938. All the compositions are available at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Fondo Nino Rota, Venice. 35 With Maria Rota’s retirement from the stage in 1938, the production of Rota’s songs ceased (Di Cintio 2014).

56  Luisa Prayer 36 The seven songs were: 1. L’uccello giallo canta sul loro albero (no. 17 “The yellow bird sings in their tree”), 2. Se vuoi riempire la tua conca (no. 12 “If you would be busy and fill your pitcher”), 3. Sei la nube della sera (no. 30 “You are the evening cloud”), 4. Mamma! Il giovine Principe deve passare (no. 7 “O mother, the young Prince is to pass”), 5. Parlami, amor mio (no. 29 “Speak to me, my love!”), 6. Sebbene la sera giunga a lenti passi (no. 67 “Though the evening comes with slow steps”), 7. Morte mia (no. 81 “Why do you whisper so faintly”). They may have been composed between 1915 (the year of publication of The Gardner in Italian) and 1922 (the year of his death). Nos. 4 and 5, however, were performed in a concert on 17 March 1920. I am grateful to Claudio Paradiso, president of the DMI (Dictionary of Italian Music), Latina, for informing me that a copy is available in the Gianfranco Plenizio Archive, DMI. 37 Orvieto penned the librettos for Orefice’s most successful operas Chopin (1901) and Mosè (1905). He went on a world tour in 1897 and later wrote a book of poetry, Verso Oriente (Towards the East, 1902). 38 Orefice, Orvieto and Cantoni were all related as members of a large Jewish family. 39 A copy of L’Offrande lyrique (Gitanjali) (1913) is kept in the library of the Vittoriale degli Italiani, D’Annunzio’s residence on Lake Garda (I am indebted to President Giordano Bruno Guerri for this information) as well as a copy of Lina Orefice Cantoni’s Tagorean set. 40 The resumption may have been prompted by Alfredo Casella’s concert in Milan (see above). Casella was personally known to the Rotas and often visited their house. 41 The three songs are: 1. Parlami, amor mio (The Gardener no. 29 “Speak to me, my love!”), 2. Il mio cuore, uccello del deserto (no. 31 “My heart, the bird of the wilderness”), 3. Sopra le verdi e gialle risaie (no. 84 “Over the green and yellow rice-fields”). Mortari composed this cycle a year after Casella’s concert in Milan (see above). He worked in close partnership with Casella from the mid-1920s onward. They performed together in concerts, organized important festivals like the Settimane musicali senesi (1939–42), and co-authored Tecnica dell’orchestra contemporanea (1948), a treatise on contemporary orchestration. 42 Mortari signed a manifesto (1 March 1923) by Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Russolo, leaders of the Italian Futurism, which called on Benito Mussolini to second the artistic revolution through a political revolution. 43 For instance, La partenza del Crociato (1925), Secchi e Sberlecchi (1926), Due canti: parole popolari italiane (1929). 44 We also find explicit references to popular elements, for instance, the characteristic portamento (a sort of glissando) which the author prescribes in the first song in the intonation of descending intervals of a third. 45 A notable instance of this was Alfredo Casella himself. In 1923, he inaugurated his so-called third manner with Tre Canzoni trecentesche (Three 14th-century songs), a cycle based on texts by anonymous poets in the Tuscan vernacular.

References Annese, Angela. 2021. “Alfredo Casella maestro di Nino Rota.” In Alfredo Casella interprete del suo tempo, edited by C. Di Lena and L. Prayer, 257–305. Lucca: LIM. Bake, Arnold A., ed. 1935. Chansons de Rabindranath Tagore. Vingt-six chants transcrits. Paris: Bibliothèque musicale du Musée Guimet.

Tagore in the Works of Early 20th-Century Italian Composers 57 Bassani, Albarosa Ines. 2020. Le suore della libertà. Tra guerra e resistenza (1940– 1945). Udine: Gaspari. Casella, Alfredo. 1941. I segreti della giara. Firenze: Sansoni (2nd ed. 2016, Milano: Saggiatore). Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Mario. 2005. Una vita di musica, un libro di ricordi. Fiesole: Cadmo. Coppola, Carlo. 1984. “Rabindranath Tagore and Western Composers: A Preliminary Essay.” Journal of South Asian Literature 19, no. 2: 41–61. Della Casa, Carlo. 1955. “The Fortunes of Kalidasa in Italy.” East and West 6, no. 2: 160–62. De Santis, Mila. 2015. “La mia espressione più schietta.” Mario CastelnuovoTedesco e la lirica da camera negli scritti critici e autobiografici. Paper presented at the Conference Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Firenze e altri orizzonti, University of Florence, June 8, 2015. Di Cintio, Eleonora. 2014. “La committenza affettuosa: le liriche da camera di Nino Rota a Maria.” In L’altro Novecento di Nino Rota, edited by Daniela Tortora, 25–53. Napoli: Edizioni del Conservatorio di Musica “San Pietro a Majella”. Fontanelli, Francesco. 2017. “Alfredo Casella prima della ‘chiarificazione’. La ‘musica della notte’ degli anni 1913–18.” Studi musicali, Nuova serie 8, no. 2: 405–62. Gherardi, Luciano. 1999. “Il mito di Sakuntala.” In Franco Alfano. Presagio di tempi nuovi con finale controcorrente, edited by Rino Maione, 89–105. Milano: Rugginenti. Gide, André. 1914. “Introduction.” In L’Offrande lyrique (Gitanjali), R. Tagore, ix–xxxiii. Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française. Lazzaro, Federico. 2012. “L’Infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, Nino e Rota.” In Lombardi 2012, 1–24. Lombardi, Francesco, ed. 2012. Nino Rota: un timido protagonista del Novecento Musicale. Torino: EDT. Lowndes Vicente, Filipa. 2012. Other Orientalisms: India Between Florence and Bombay, 1860–1900. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Maione, Rino. 1999. “La Lirica vocale da camera.” In Franco Alfano. Presagio di tempi nuovi con finale controcorrente, edited by Rino Maione, 217–68. Milano: Rugginenti. Pagani, Silvio. 1919. Introduzione al sistema filosofico dell’Antivita: il mondo come volontà di Vita e Antivita. Lugano: Coenobium. Prayer, Mario. 2014a. “Italy.” In Rabindranath Tagore: One Hundred Years of Global Reception: 1913–2013, edited by M. Kämpchen, I. Bhanga and U. Dasgupta, 422–47. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. ———. 2014b. “Italian Indologists, Rabindranath Tagore and ‘Indianness’, 1913– 1961.” In Oltre i confini. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Burgio, edited by R. Cagiano de Azevedo, C. Cecchi et al., 267–86. Roma: La Sapienza. Salis, Giovanni. 2012. “Le liriche per canto e pianoforte di Nino Rota.” In Lombardi 2012, 25–73. Salvetti, Guido. 1966. “La lirica da camera di Giorgio Federico Ghedini.” Collectanea Historiae Musicae 4: 271–82.

58  Luisa Prayer Sanguinetti, Giorgio. 1999. “L’occultamento dei processi tonali nei Tre poemi di Rabindranath Tagore (1919) di Franco Alfano.” In Streicher 1999, 597–614. Sen, Suddhaseel. 2008. “The Art Song and Tagore: Settings by Western Composers.” University of Toronto Quarterly 78: 1110–32. Streicher, Johannes, ed. 1999. Ultimi splendori. Cilea, Giordano, Alfano. Roma: ISMEZ. Thapar, Romila. 2001. Śakuntalā. Texts, Readings, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press. Vecchio, Matteo M. 2012. “Milano, Antonio Banfi, la ‘singolare generazione’. La formazione universitaria di Nino Rota.” In Lombardi 2012, 101–23. Waterhouse, John C. 1999. “Da ‘Risurrezione’ a ‘La leggenda di Sakuntala’. Dal ‘verismo’ degli esordi allo stile personale della maturità.” In Streicher 1999, 523–47.

3 Translating Cultures Italian Dramatists on the Bangla1 Stage Paromita Chakravarti

The scholarship on Bengal-Italy literary exchange has been dominated by discussions on the Italian and Bengal Renaissances and the influence of canonical Italian poets like Dante, Petrarch and Tasso on a nascent Bengali language, poetics and literature.2 However, little has been written on a more modern and continuing cultural engagement between Italian and Bangla drama. From the 1960s, Italian playwrights like Luigi Pirandello, Dario Fo, Franca Rame and Ugo Betti have been regularly adapted by Bengali thespians and continue to be staged. This chapter attempts to explore this neglected history of dramatic translations which have consistently enriched Bangla theatre and given it new directions by providing fresh forms, dramaturgies, plots, stage craft and ideological expressions. This brief survey of Italian influences on Bangla theatre will shed new light on Bangla theatre history, its long and fraught association with Western drama as well as help us to better assess the lasting legacies of Italian dramatists on nonItalian, non-Western stage traditions. Bangla theatre history and the anxiety of influence Bangla theatre history has been framed by the debate on indigeneity and foreignness – whether Bangla drama has grown out of native forms or has developed through Western imports. Underlying these discussions is the larger political question of nationalism and internationalism, whether we make a patriotic case for a ‘pure’ Bangla histrionic tradition or we accept the essentially hybrid character of the theatre which has been continuously fertilized by the cross currents of world theatre. Since its early beginnings in the 19th century, modern Bangla theatre, mostly pioneered by Englisheducated Bengali youth, was referred to as vilati jatra acknowledging its amalgamation of colonial influences (vilati) with a folk form (jatra). Bangla drama continued to draw inspiration from Western models even in its nationalist phase and also after independence.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-5

60  Paromita Chakravarti This “foreign” influence on Bangla theatre is marked from its originary moment. It was a Russian, adventurer, linguist, musician and writer Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev (1749–1817) who established the first European-style proscenium Bangla theatre in Kolkata (Domtulla) in 1795 and produced its first Bangla play, an adaptation of M. Jodrelle’s The Disguise (Kalponik Shongbadol), with Bengali actors and actresses (unusual for the times). Through the 19th century, the Bangla stage continued to be enriched by Western dramatic traditions even while it suffered from a deep anxiety of influence. Madhusudan Dutt’s play Sarmistha (1858) was criticized for failing to follow indigenous classical Sanskrit theatre conventions. Dutt responded to the critique in a letter to Gourdas Basak: There will . . . be something of a foreign air about my drama, but . . . Do you dislike . . . Byron’s poetry for its Asiatic air, Carlyle’s prose for its Germanism? .  .  . I  am writing for that portion of my countrymen who think as I think, whose minds have been more or less imbued with Western ideas and modes of thinking. (Dutt 1963, 123) The Western author who profoundly shaped modern Bangla theatre was Shakespeare. From the mid-19th century, Shakespeare was translated and adapted into Bangla drama with varying degrees of fidelity and popular success. Girish Chandra Ghosh’s close translation of Macbeth performed in Minerva (1893) failed miserably in the box office while Nagendranath Chowdhury’s loose adaptation of Hamlet, Hariraj played to full houses in Classic Theatre (1897), demonstrating how foreign texts only work when successfully localized. Restoration dramatists like Congreve, Sheridan and Goldsmith and some European playwrights like Molière were adapted on the Bangla stage. From the end of the 19th century, the interest in foreign adaptations reduced perhaps because of the growing nationalist movement. There was a tendency to turn to indigenous classical writers like Kalidasa for inspiration and to contemporary Indian authors like Tagore. Sisir Kumar Bhaduri, a doyen of the Bangla stage set up the first theatre with a Bangla name, Natya Mandir (Theatre Temple) in 1925, a departure from the Minerva, Star, Classic and National theatres in the city. He lamented that Bangla theatre relied on foreign drama rather than on indigenous jatra which he sought to revive. He promoted Tagore’s plays and used local costumes and scenery in his attempt to build a nationalist theatre but met with limited success. Through the 1930s, the Communist Party of India was emerging as an important cultural and political force. Their students’ wing, the Students’ Federation of India, organized study groups and cultural programmes to propagate Marxist ideas which led to the establishment of the Youth

Translating Cultures 61 Cultural Institute (YCI) in 1940 which included poets, vocalists and lyrists like Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Debabrata Biswas and Jyotirindra Maitra and actors and directors who would later revolutionize Bangla theatre like Bijon Bhattacharya and Sambhu Mitra. YCI first produced English political plays but soon started staging Bangla plays in order to have a wider reach. In 1941, YCI expanded its activities as the Anti-Fascist Writers and Artistes Association which used theatre to build people’s resistance against the fascist Axis powers in the Second World War. In 1944, the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) created theatre history by staging Nabanno (The Harvest) by Bijon Bhattacharya on the 1943 Bengal Famine, a scathing critique of the artificial food shortage engineered by unscrupulous hoarders and black marketeers taking advantage of war shortages, in complicity with the colonial government. Driven by hunger people left their villages to arrive in Kolkata. Their cries begging for a little phyan (the leftover water from boiled rice) rent the air. Many died on the streets. Nabanno gave voice to this desperate spectacle of human suffering, inaugurating a theatre of the common people with a distinctive new politics and aesthetics. The play owed its success to its topicality – it responded to the times in a way that the commercial public theatre failed to do. Ravaged by war, evacuations, blackouts in the city and rendered cautious by a vigilant colonial government intolerant of political plays, the public theatres could not afford the risk of putting on new or radical productions. But the audience, particularly youth, was hungry for new plays exposing the grim reality of the times. Unsurprisingly, Nabanno became instantly popular. Within the IPTA, however, a certain section felt that with these overtly political plays, the theatre was becoming a tool of Left propaganda, and the autonomy of art was being compromised. They were also uncomfortable about theatre workers being card-carrying Communist Party members. Differences within the IPTA led to the formation of breakaway factions who started new theatre movements and groups. What was originally the people’s drama movement (Gana Natya andolon) branched out into the New Drama movement (Naba Natya andolon). While people’s drama was revolutionary, political, and even propagandist, based on the lives of the poor and oppressed, New Drama, while also concerned with the dream of an egalitarian society, was more focused on finding a new dramatic language and aesthetics and turned to international plays for inspiration. Gana Natya continued alongside Naba Natya but the energies of the political theatre of IPTA gradually diminished and the schism between the two kinds of dramatic expression deepened. In 1948, the banning of the Communist Party of India to which IPTA was affiliated facilitated an exodus of artists from IPTA, many of whom started their own drama groups initiating the group theatre movement which would set the tone of serious and committed Bangla theatre from the 1950s to the 1990s.

62  Paromita Chakravarti Experimental in the form and content of its plays and broadly Left-leaning in its politics, group theatre emerged at a time when the public professional theatre was declining and IPTA was breaking up. These theatre groups had limited material resources and depended on a committed pool of educated, talented and industrious members who pursued theatre as a passion rather than as a livelihood. The groups rarely had a fixed auditorium, regularly performed call shows, travelled to the districts and abjured the ‘star’ system although they had their own counter-canon of celebrity directors and actors. Some groups like Bohurupee, one of the earliest to emerge from IPTA in 1948, steadily established their own brand of theatre under the leadership of Sombhu Mitra. Although in the initial phase, their plays were in the people’s theatre mode with productions of Nabanno, Pathik, Ulu Khagra and Chhenraa Taar, they gradually moved towards the formal innovations of Naba Natya marked by their 1951 production of Tagore’s Chaar Adhyay. In its quest for experimental forms and dramaturgies Bohurupee drew inspiration from Western drama, adapting plays from Ibsen, Eugene O’Neil, Chekov and others. Utpal Dutt’s Little Theatre Group (1953), later known as People’s Little Theatre, translated several foreign dramatists in their quest for revolutionary theatre. Dutt produced Gorky’s Lower Depths (Neecher Mahal) and several jatra adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in this phase. But even as more and more Bangla theatre groups turned to Western drama to find new plots and forms, the anxiety about losing touch with indigenous traditions and compromising political ideals at the altar of aesthetic innovation deepened. Some of the earlier discussions around the Italian influence on Bangla theatre centre around these anxieties as well as concerns about Left and anti-fascist politics which defined the group theatre movement. The Italian influence: adapting Pirandello Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, one of the stalwarts of Bangla theatre, was closely associated with the IPTA through much of the 1950s, but like many others, he left the organization following differences on political and aesthetic questions. He went on to direct plays for Nandikar, a theatre group remembered for its successful adaptations of Western dramatists like Ibsen, Chekov, Wesker, Ionesco, Eugene O’Neil, Brecht and Sophocles. Having started its journey in 1960 with a debut performance of the “foreign” play, Ibsen’s Ghosts (Bidehi) which received only a lukewarm response, Nandikar struggled to find its feet as an independent group. At this critical moment, Rudraprasad Sengupta’s4 Bangla adaptation (Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro) of Pirandello’s Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six

Translating Cultures 63 Characters in Search of an Author) saved the day. Directed by Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, the play premiered in Muktangan on 12 November  1961. Its success was a significant boost to the fledgeling theatre group. However, like the mixed reaction at the original play’s opening in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, the Calcutta audience too were both dazzled and bewildered by its radical metatheatrical form, its absurdist tone and bold content. Most reviews appreciated the initiative of adapting a play which was a sensation in European theatre history, praising the translation more for its felicity than fidelity.5 However, the production drew flak from the IPTA and Left intellectuals who questioned the ethics of choosing to stage Pirandello, a playwright tainted by his association with the fascist regime. Asit Bandyopadhyay, a Nandikar member, recollects: Since it was inspired from a play by an Italian playwright who was deemed to be a Fascist, many boycotted our shows. Utpal Dutt refused our invitation to watch the play. No theatre hall was ready to let us stage the show. But Muktangan agreed. The controversy helped to bring in audiences. Ajitesh and I  would visit cinemas and distribute leaflets advertising the play. From the third show onwards, the auditorium started filling up. After the fourth show, we made a small profit for the first time. The sixth one was played to a packed house. (Mitra 2013) With Pirandello’s play, Nandikar had arrived in Bangla theatre and did not have to look back. However, the unease caused by the choice of Pirandello remained. Decades later, Rudraprasad Sengupta, the adapter of the play sought to answer the allegations of IPTA and his Left colleagues in his book on the influence of Western dramatists on Bangla theatre, Poschimer Natok – Ibsen Theke Albee (Western Drama – Ibsen to Albee): “Pirandello received patronage for his productions from Mussolini. But by 1934 he had distanced himself and the enthusiasm he had for the fascists in his early life was lost. This is evident in his play, The Tale of the Changeling Son” (Sengupta 2004, 35). In the same chapter, Rudraprasad also addresses the unease about Pirandello’s “anti-life” (jibonbimukh) stance: Although the absurdist bleakness, alienation and irony of the human condition permeate Pirandello’s plays, they also seek to understand the roots of human pain – why do we suffer? what is truth? what is good? . . . Perhaps there are no answers in his plays, but he keeps questioning, he never dismisses life as meaningless as the absurdists do. It is one thing to be bloodied in pain and another to be numbed by it, to

64  Paromita Chakravarti be pained by life is an acknowledgement of its existence – Pirandello’s plays testify to that. (Sengupta 2004, 38) The originality of tone, masterful use of the grotesque, an anti-sentimental cerebralism, the generic amalgam of dark comedy and comic tragedy and the critique of naturalism made Pirandello an exciting and radical playwright to explore. Rudraprasad wrote in the Preface to his adaptation of the play: The play appeals not only because of its tragic tone. In this play Pirandello raises important questions on the theme of ‘Art versus life’ and the theory of drama (which are equally important in the context of Bengal). [It] documents the ability of the Naturalist form (which is most commonly used in contemporary Bangla theatre) to represent life, as well as its limitations. (Sengupta 1968) Remembering his thrilling encounter with Pirandello in his university days, Rudraprasad says: “I found a combination of the heart and the mind in his works. I spent seven nights adapting Six Characters for a university gathering. The play was morally and theatrically challenging but the students were floored” (Das 2009). Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro had revolutionized the Bangla stage by its theatrical ingenuity and power (Figure 3.1). Yet it was attacked by both Left critics – because of Pirandello’s fascist association – and conservative and reactionary forces for its radical aesthetics and form as well as its “sexual and incestuous content”. Rudraprasad speaks of the “tremendous backlash” caused by the play which forced Nandikar to drop it from their repertoire: “Doing Pirandello was a stigma but it put us on the national theatre map” (Das 2009). The director of Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, was criticized for ignoring ideological concerns and being seduced by Western drama and its new-fangled dramaturgies. Asserting his belief that our understanding of theatre was defined by modern European drama, Ajitesh continued to adapt foreign plays, appreciating their formal experiments. He was equally drawn to classical Sanskrit theatre and produced Mudrarakshasa for its innovative dramatic form. He felt that theatre was an urban phenomenon and as such native folk forms like the jatra were not suited to it (Bandopadhay 2010a). In an essay titled Anudito Natok (translated plays), Ajitesh defended the need for translations and adaptations to infuse new spirit, emotions,

Translating Cultures 65

Figure 3.1  Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro. Credit: Natyasodh Sansthan Archives.

characters and structures into an existing dramatic corpus to enrich it and help it to evolve in new directions by finding resonances across languages and cultures. Pointing out how impoverished world theatre would be if Stanislavski did not have access to a Russian translation of An Enemy of the People or Brecht to German versions of Greek plays, he stressed that foreign plays inspired rather than impeded the creation of original Bangla plays (Bandopadhay 2010b). However, Ajitesh was not indifferent to indigenous dramatic forms. His interest in Indian regional theatre and in the classical Sanskrit dramatic tradition was evidenced by his productions of Andha Yug and Mudrarakshasa, which too ironically could only be accessed through translations. He was also meticulous in localizing his adaptations so that they appeared to be organically rooted in the Bangla context, unrecognizable as “foreign” imports. This allowed him to take his adaptations of Brecht and Chekov to the villages of Bengal without the risk of alienating his audiences. Attacked for being populist and apolitical – for diluting Marxist ideology in his Brecht adaptations, choosing to produce Pirandello, a fascist writer, focusing only on the formal aspects of theatre, Ajitesh left both

66  Paromita Chakravarti IPTA and the Communist Party but remained committed to his own political and aesthetic principles. He pointed out that there might be an excellent play but [which does not] contain any reflection of the political problems of our contemporary society. . . . Psychoanalytical plays, plays about individual conflicts, plays analyzing the ethical ends of science and religion . . . have been themes of drama for ages and . . . are remembered by posterity. (Bandopadhay 2010c) Disregarding criticism Ajitesh continued to successfully produce foreign plays which did not conform to the Left theatre’s requirements of a ‘political play’. Pirandello appeared to provide him with a theatrical vitality that he needed at important turning points of his stage career. Just as Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro had provided him the impetus to leave IPTA and set up Nandikar, he turned again to Pirandello to save his group when fourteen members left Nandikar in 1966 following disagreements. He adapted Pirandello’s Enrico IV as Sher Afghan and staged it with just twelve days’ rehearsals. It was a runaway success and helped him to keep his group afloat. Asit Bandyopadhyay reminisced: “Sher Afghan gave us the courage to regroup once more” (Mitra 2013). In Pirandello’s original play, an Italian aristocrat falls off his horse and loses his memory during carnival festivities in which he was playing the role of Henry IV. After regaining consciousness, he continues to believe for several years that he is indeed Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor while his friends and family play along with his delusion till the doctor precipitates a crisis by seeking to cure him of it. Ajitesh heightened the metatheatrical interplay of truth and imagination, illusion and reality, self and performed self in Pirandello’s drama by setting it in the context of students’ amateur theatre. The themes of madness, love and revenge in the original play receive a dramatic and historical intensity in Ajitesh’s exploration of a triangulated love relationship between the three main actors as they rehearse D.L. Roy’s play Noorjehan set in 17th-century Bengal. Replacing Henry IV by the figure of Sher Afghan, the tragic hero of medieval Bengal who was betrayed by both the Mughals and his wife Noorjehan (who later married Jahangir) was a coup de theatre according to drama historian Samik Bandyopadhyay.6 The very title of the play evoked Bangla commercial theatre and its historic and melodramatic plays set in the Mughal period (Figure 3.2). By the end of the 1950s, the professional theatre had collapsed, yet a certain nostalgia for it remained which Ajitesh’s adaptation could capitalize on even while presenting a modernist drama.7 The two iconic Pirandello plays, Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro and Sher Afghan associated with Ajitesh live on in Bangla stage history and

Translating Cultures 67

Figure 3.2  Sher Afghan. Credit: Natyasodh Sansthan Archives.

continue to be performed by different groups. Some of these more recent incarnations will be discussed in a later section. But the Italian dramatist whose plays dominated Bangla theatre through the latter part of the 1980s and 1990s was Dario Fo and later those of his wife and co-dramatist Franca Rame. In the 1960s, Pirandello’s plays brought a new idiom and form into Bangla theatre, enabling powerful directors like Rudraprasad Sengupta and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay to emerge from the growing rigidity and authoritarianism of IPTA to set up their own groups and chart out a new theatrical journey. Later, Dario Fo provided a similar impetus to Bibhash Chakraborty, a dynamic and innovative director who had worked closely with Ajitesh in Nandikar but had left following aesthetic and political differences. Dario Fo, Bibhash Chakraborty and the politics of the Left establishment After leaving Nandikar in 1966, Bibhash Chakraborty set up Theatre Workshop, for which he directed memorable plays like Rajrakta, Chakbhanga Modhu and adaptations of Brecht, Sartre and O’Casey. But in the 1980s, Chakraborty felt that his politics no longer aligned with his group which was moving closer to and receiving support from

68  Paromita Chakravarti the cultural wing of the ruling Left party in the state. Being “disaffected with the party” he decided to leave to preserve his artistic autonomy and creative freedom.8 He founded Anya Theatre in 1985, which marked its inception with Bibhash Chakraborty and Bachhu Dasgupta’s Hochhe ta Ki (What’s going on?), a Bangla adaptation of the iconoclastic Italian playwright Dario Fo’s 1981 play, Clacson, trombette e pernacchi (Trumpets and Raspberries). The brochure of the first production of the play dissociated itself from the accepted notions of Left, committed, political theatre: We are not making any announcements, not taking any pledges, not raising any slogans . . . we will work in the theatre to express our ideas – not to please any particular party, group or individual or to merely survive in the market. What plays we choose, how we enact them, for which audience – will be decided solely by us. (Brochure of Hochhe ta Ki, 1985) Fo’s play was chosen specifically to assert the critical distance and the political and aesthetic independence of Chakraborty’s new group from the Left state power. Unlike Pirandello whose fascist connections invited suspicion from the IPTA and the Communist party, Dario Fo’s Left credentials were never in doubt. However, his critique of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and of the role of the Italian Communist Party which led the party to withdraw support from his theatre company, Nuova Scena, and his subsequent founding of Collettivo La Comune, with broadly Left sympathies but no party alliances made Fo a politically complex figure towards whom the Bengali Left establishment was at best ambivalent. By choosing a play by Fo to inaugurate his new group, Chakraborty was announcing his own non-aligned, critical position, which he has maintained to this day. He writes: When I first chose the English translation of Trumpets and Raspberries, the Left Front9 had been ruling Bengal for nine years already and people’s faith and enthusiasm in the Front was declining. They had realized that revolution was a distant dream, it was too much to expect a corruption free administration. Leftists had lost their character by trying to adjust with changing politics by compromising their principles. Smelling power, the middle class Left leadership had become greedy – the Marxist revolutionary parties had been fragmented. The policy was not to upset anybody (what if votes declined?). . . . As such, antisocial businessmen, murderers, dacoits and criminals got the license to loot. The helpless people suffered. .  .  . It is in this context that we thought of staging Hochhe ta ki. (Chakraborty 2013, 48)

Translating Cultures 69 In the play, a wealthy capitalist, Himmatwala (Mr Powerful) meets with an accident while being abducted in a car. The abductors leave the injured Himmatwala and escape. Chandidas, a union leader in Himmatwala’s factory, finds him, wraps him in his coat and takes him to the hospital. Doctors find Chandidas’s identity papers in the coat, assume that it is Chandidas, and use his photograph to reconstruct Himmatwala’s face through plastic surgery (Figure  3.3). Thus, Himmatwala assumes the face of Chandidas implying ironically that the identities of the capitalist oppressor and the working-class union leader had become interchangeable in a corrupt world run by a nexus of the police, administration and capitalists where the forces of Left resistance were colluding with and becoming indistinguishable from the exploiters. The play did not run very well because of its experimental form, unconventional plot and audaciously anti-establishment politics which the audience was unused to. Not only did the bourgeois criticize Fo’s Left extremism, the communist party and the party-run government were also uncomfortable with Fo’s critique of the parliamentary Left. The influential theatre critic Dharani Ghosh wrote: Mainstream Bengali theatre avoids Dario Fo, largely because the prevalent Leftist ideology in West Bengal runs contrary to his conviction that

Figure 3.3  Hochhe ta Ki. Credit: Natyasodh Sansthan Archives.

70  Paromita Chakravarti established Communist parties today have betrayed Marx or that the organized State must of necessity be a repressive machine. It is courageous of Bibhash Chakraborty and Anya Theatre to challenge received opinion. (Ghosh 1986) However, Ghosh criticized Chakraborty’s ultimate failure of nerve demonstrated through his “ludicrous caricature of an Industrialist with a Marwari sounding name” which reduced the “comedy of terror” to ridiculous ethnic stereotyping. In contrast to Fo’s bold naming of his industrialist character as Gianni Agnelli, a real-life businessman, owner of the Fiat empire who controlled Italy’s politics through money power, Chakraborty, Ghosh suggests, was afraid of making direct allusions to the political establishment as he was of using Fo’s scurrilous language: “[Chakraborty’s] language also sounds too proper to suggest Fo’s use of obscenities to expose what he considers bourgeois hypocrisies” (Ghosh 1986). Although Ghosh suggests that Chakraborty’s adaptation was not radical enough, Left reviewers saw the play as a triumph of capitalism, which ends with the industrialist having the last laugh: “The play ends with Himmatwala’s reverberating announcement that he is the state and his will is the state’s will. This bourgeois statement drowns everything else that has been said in the play” (Bhattacharya 1987, 31). The adaptation was also accused of providing a distorted view of the Indian labour movement, particularly through the flawed character of Chandidas, the union leader who was depicted as an adulterer who gives up all his leftist political principles to surrender to the police, is willing to appease a bourgeois media and does not hesitate to take dowry to pay off his debts. Calling the production neither correct (inaccurate representation of socio-political realities) nor honest, the reviewer sees it as an expression of bourgeois class interest (32, 34). Another Left critic underlines the differences between the Italian and Bengali socioeconomic contexts to point out reasons why the adaptation falters: Chandidas’s household, speech, demeanour, wife or girlfriend – nothing is like a [Bengali] factory worker’s – it is more like a middle-class halfintellectual’s. His girlfriend is doing a PhD in Psychology – perhaps this is how things are in Italy, but in the suburbs of Kolkata? (Chattopadhyay 1987, 105) In a personal interview,10 the dramatist himself acknowledged that the Bengali audience had to stretch its imagination to accept that there were sophisticated (in the 1980s) electronic gadgets like a geyser and TV set in a workers’ house. Anticipating that the farcical elements of Fo’s play would also be seen as alien and alienating in a Bengali context, Chakraborty had referred to

Translating Cultures 71 the absurdist traditions in indigenous literature by quoting Sukumar Ray, a Bangla nonsense poet in the brochure of the first production (Brochure of Hochhe ta Ki, 1985). This however did little to convince the reviewers who pointed out the incompatibilities of Bengali and Italian cultures in the use of humour for solemn political purposes: Bengalis . . . assume that laughter should not concern itself with serious topics and grave matters should not deploy laughter. In discussing weighty issues the tone should be staid, intense or sombre . . . in this context the awkward reception of Hochhe ta Ki is expected . . .. The manner in which Italians joke about their political parties through their stories, sketches, plays, poems (after all they have had 46 governments in the 42 years after the War)– it is not in our nature. In this matter we are more British. The play was also faulted for bringing in too many local references which distracted attention from the real issues. Finally, the review closed with a critique not of Chakraborty’s adaptation but of Fo’s own brand of theatre and his Left politics: Fo’s journey from commercial theatre to the Communist party’s cultural front to the ideological free lance theatre of the Neo-Left (where does his commitment lie? his accountability?). So even if Italian humour can be translated, how much of Fo can be? The Bengali parliamentary Left’s discomfort with Fo is evidenced in the inevitable comparisons between him and Brecht who was repeatedly adapted on the Bangla stage by stalwarts like Utpal Dutt: Brecht’s plays also contain fun, also serious issues. . . . Which of these elements contribute more to the success of a play is debatable – but it is important to maintain a balance between them. . . . In Fo’s plays this balance perhaps tilts overly towards fun drowning out the serious elements. . . . Hochhe ta Ki suffers from this very imbalance. (Chattopadhyay 1987, 105) Fo’s use of farce, his critique of the parliamentary Left, his early stint in commercial theatre, all contributed to the suspicion with which his theatre and its adaptations were regarded in Bengal. Added to this were aspersions of having bourgeois sympathies and being unable to localize Fo’s politics or his Italian humour cast on the adapter leading to the lukewarm response that Hochhe ta Ki received. However, Chakraborty’s second attempt at adapting Fo, this time his 1970 Morte accidentale di un anarchico (Accidental Death of an Anarchist)

72  Paromita Chakravarti as Mrityu na Hatya? (Death or Killing?), produced by Nandipat in 1999 turned out to be much more popular. By then, the shock value of Fo’s theatre had abated a little, people were more used to his acerbic humour and the Left political establishment had become less obsessed with ideological puritanism in a growing climate of neoliberalization in India. Meanwhile, Chakraborty had also matured in his craft and wisely chose a setting for the adaptation which the audience could strongly relate to – the Naxalite uprising which racked Bengal in the late 1960s. A Maoist youth movement which was suppressed through brutal state violence and left a bitter memory of police tortures, custodial deaths and loss of young lives, it provided powerful resonances with Fo’s play based on Giuseppe Pinelli’s suspicious death in prison during police interrogation about the 1969 Milan bombing which killed sixteen people. Based on a dubious list of names of comrades revealed by Pinelli, the extreme Left was falsely indicted for the incident. The case dragged on for ten years, finally revealing that a far-right neofascist group with collaborators in Italy’s secret police were responsible for the crime. The political and military masterminds were let off lightly while the petty criminals got punished. Fo’s group, La Comune, accessed the police reports, the investigation documents, and built an alternative scenario in their play much before the case was resolved. Accidental Death of an Anarchist was first adapted in Bangla by Utpal Dutt in 1980 as Bangla Chhado (Quit Bengal) but without much success. However, Bibhash Chakraborty’s adaptation Mrityu na Hatya? a potent combination of politics, mystery and humour became an instant hit running continuously for a hundred nights. The brochure of the first production of the play emphasized its broad political relevance: Only a few decades ago the world was witness to the rise of the neo-Left movement beyond the traditional confines of the Communist Establishment in developed, developing and backward countries alike. We all know how the movement shook up the socio-political life in our country . . . how brutally the State machinery crushed it . . .. The State power and ruling class . . . retain their character in history – be it Milan in Italy or British India or in Pinochet’s Chile or for that matter in Calcutta during the Congress regime (may be even in present times?). Our comedy Mrityu na Hatya speaks of all this and more. (Brochure of Mrityu na Hatya? 1999) Chakraborty’s play set in the Naxal period is not only chronologically close to the events which inspired Fo, it is also located within the larger historical debates between revisionists and extremists in Left movements the world over (Majumdar 2000). This serves to universalize the play even while it is effectively localized in the Naxal movement in Bengal. The play critiques

Translating Cultures 73 the oppressive non-Left Congress regime led by the then chief minister, Siddhartha Shankar Ray and his police dreaded for its ‘third degree’ custodial tortures and ‘fake encounters’ of young Naxalite revolutionaries. Notorious officers like Runu Guha Niyogy and Ranjit Gupta become Inspector Runu Ray and Ramani Raman Karmakar in Mrityu na Hatya? and the police headquarters Lalbazar is named Halal bazaar (Slaughter market) (Figure  3.4). Although the play suggests that the police was no different under the Left Front, satirizing both capitalism and establishment communism, the Left disregarded these implications. Unlike the unease caused by the critique of the Left establishment in Hochhe ta Ki, Mrityu na Hatya? appeared to be more acceptable because the target of criticism was a nonLeft government and its police force who were ruthlessly attacking communists (albeit the ‘ultra-Left’). Ganashakti, the mouthpiece of the ruling Left government, although sceptical about Fo who was “a rebel in disguise, rapidly changing – now a communist, now an ‘un-communist’ ”, applauded the play’s attack on the Congress Chief Minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray, traditional rival of the ruling Left government (Saha 2000). The focused censure of police atrocities in Mrityu na Hatya? also deflected criticism from the Left party and government which had caused discomfort in the earlier adaptation: “performing this play in the 1990s has a single relevance: it reminds the audience that regimes change, but the police does not” (Dasgupta 2009). By setting it in Naxal times, the play

Figure 3.4  Mrityu na Hatya? Credit: Natyasodh Sansthan Archives.

74  Paromita Chakravarti reignited popular anger towards police brutalities which made the revolutionary ending of the play recommending the blowing up the police officers appear acceptable. Called “the best political play in the last 30 years”, it was compared to classics like Neeldarpan which defined nationalist resistance against the British (Ray 2009). The adulation that the play received was unexpected, since Chakraborty felt that Fo’s edgy, dark and anarchic tone ran counter to the very character of Bangla political theatre: The gananatyo (people’s theatre) movement was based on ideas of Marxism and class struggle . . . these plays were about the triumph of the oppressed against the known oppressor – very crude and simplistic with little analysis and a predominance of affect and sloganeering. Even a pioneering director of political theatre like Utpal Dutt who loved Brecht resorted to heavy doses of Sarat Chandra like sentiment.11 However, Chakraborty felt that audiences were no longer excited or inspired by the political plays which the Bangla stage was churning out and the time was ripe to bring in a radical aesthetic and political change. This was enabled by taking cues from Fo’s iconoclastic theatre: The times were getting more complex. The ruler’s face and mask were becoming indistinguishable, exploitation was seeping in everywhere. In the 1960s and ‘70s all over the world, new Left movements were gathering force. They put all institutions – familial – social – religious – economic – political – administrative, under close scrutiny to understand the most modern modes of exploitation, expose their respectable image and reveal their real nature. Fo wanted to undertake this iconoclasm in theatre and he did it through farce. While Bangla political theatre had been revolutionized through Utpal Dutt’s Brecht adaptations, its tone remained serious and intellectual. It was Fo’s plays which brought elements of farce, grotesquerie, slapstick humour, and physical comedy to the Bangla stage. Italian folk cultures of puppeteering, itinerant medieval theatre (giullari), traditions of commedia dell’arte with its improvisation, buffoonery, lazzo (witty joke) and pantomime, medieval bawdy songs and burlesques debunking rulers, bourgeoisie and clergy vitalized and rooted Fo’s drama in the Italian soil, helping it to touch the lives of ordinary people. This attracted Chakraborty to Fo: Fortunately, according to Fo, even fascism could not affect the tradition of humour and satire in Italy. In fact it has enhanced and improved it . . . . Unlike the cunning English, Germans or the French, the stupid

Translating Cultures 75 Italian bourgeois forces did not think of destroying the ancient art forms of the people of the lower social orders. We Indians have suffered this fate – the British have carefully demolished our folk art forms. The humour, farce, sharp satire and mockery of common people – their “obscene” articulations or their spontaneous creativity are still intact and untouched in Italy. .  .  . It is Dario Fo’s farce which has taken him close to the people. And our political theatre even today has not been able to venture out of the too familiar circle of middle-class Bengali babus wearing their masks of omniscience and seriousness, even though people’s theatre (gananatya) is over fifty years old. (Chakraborty 2013, 49) In a personal interview,12 Chakraborty said how he used his own exposure to older Bengali folk humour contained in Bhanr and shong traditions in adapting Fo’s dark and rambunctious farce. Using “outright comedy” to create a sense of horror, he inserted gags and improvisation, local jokes about politics and culture, metatheatrical interruptions, retaining Fo’s sarcastic references to the troublesome author and adding digs about the adaptor: The audience was kept entertained with a display of . . . comical absurdities. . . . As the tragic events unfolded, revealing the ugly face of State terrorism, their faces turned grim and their eyes spiteful and angry. Dario Fo’s art lies in casting an explosive subject in a comic mould. (Brochure of Mrityu na Hatya? 1999) Although remembered primarily for the two plays adapted by Chakraborty, Fo’s 1974 political farce against price rise, Non si paga, non si paga! (Cant Pay, Won’t Pay) was adapted by Class Theatre as Baadti Daam Debo Naa (Won’t pay extra) in 1992 under Ramen Sarkar’s direction. Adapted in many Indian languages, it is a sharp indictment of a political establishment which fails to address inflation leading to a desperate situation where women steal goods to survive. However, despite being a close translation and maintaining the scurrilous language of the original, Sarkar failed to recreate Fo’s savage satire and his energetic and improvisatory performance technique (Lal 1993). The production of Fo’s Non tutti i ladri vengono per nuocere (The Virtuous Burglar) adapted and directed by Amitabho Dutta as Tashkar Brittyanto (A story of thieves) and produced by Ganakrishti in 2006 was appreciated for its slick and fast-paced acting generating humour and suspense (Lal 2006). A satire on bourgeois peccadilloes, it shows how a petty thief gets embroiled in the marital infidelities of two couples when he goes to rob their house. More of a sexual farce, the play lacked the political intensity of the earlier Fo adaptations.

76  Paromita Chakravarti Having introduced significant changes in dramaturgy, tone, performing styles and ideologies of Bangla political theatre in the 1980s, Fo continued to be performed on the Bangla stage well into the early 2000s but with less regularity and success. With a right-wing government at the centre and a growing climate of neoliberalism, his radical theatre had become less relevant. Gender politics on the Bangla stage: adapting Ugo Betti and Franca Rame As mainstream Left politics became more fractured and newer mobilizations like the women’s movement gathered force, the Bangla stage responded with plays focused on issues of gender justice and with women as central protagonists. From the 1980s, women directors like Tripti Mitra, Saoli Mitra, Usha Ganguly, Jayati Bose and Sohag Sen also emerged in Bangla theatre. Just as the works by Italian dramatists, Pirandello and Fo, helped to mark major shifts in the aesthetics and politics of Bangla drama, Ugo Betti’s La regina e gli insorti (Queen and the Rebels, 1949) also signalled the new interest in gender politics and women-oriented plays. Translated by Prashanta Sen as Rani Kahini (Queen Story) and directed by Ramaprasad Banik, it was the first independent production by the group theatre, Chenamukh in 1981. Exploring themes of women, leadership and power, the play maps how an ordinary sex worker Comilla decides to save the life of a besieged queen who was fleeing in disguise from revolutionaries who had seized power. Taking pity on the terrified queen, Comilla pretends to be her and embraces death and in doing so the woman who was a prostitute . . . assumes the dignity of a queen. The dignity not of regal wealth or luxury but of courage. She finds the meaning of life in her transcendence from prostitute to queen, when even death becomes inconsequential. (Brochure of Rani Kahini, 1981) In dying as the false queen, Comilla exposes a hollow masculinist politics – whether of a tired aristocracy represented by a cowardly queen or the opportunism of the rebels. When the revolutionary Rango promises a new future to the poor, “Very soon a day will come when there will be no poor people in our country”, Comilla asks: “But what would you do then? Your business is to play around with the sufferings of people”. Disgusted with their selfishness, Comilla rejects their plan of keeping her alive for the revolution and chooses to die instead. Finally, it is an ordinary woman who can transcend self-interest and die a martyr (Adhikari 1983). Although the play provided a strong depiction of an ordinary woman’s heroic transformation ably performed by Anasua Ghosh (Adhikari 1983),

Translating Cultures 77 it was criticized for its verbosity and uneven acting (Gupta 1981). The director was also faulted for failing to capture the flavour of the original: Betti’s career as a lawyer and a judge . . . moulded his dramatic style into courtroom settings, but Banik cannot quite evoke this pervasive atmosphere of legal cross examination and counter-arguments . . . the intensity of Betti’s investigation of guilt and power . . . Betti’s austere theatrical tone . . . the complexities of social and individual accountability. (Lal 1991a) Through the 1990s, adaptations of Italian plays by Franca Rame (co-written with Dario Fo) on women’s issues were produced on the Bangla stage. Almost monologues, using a single or few characters, props and scene changes, these plays were written and performed by Rame to keep their group going through bleak times. In 1991, Rangakarmee produced Vama (woman), with Usha Ganguly in the lead under the direction of Bibhash Chakraborty. A  triptych of three short plays focused on a single female character, two were adapted from Rame – Subah (Morning) from Rame’s Il risveglio (Waking up) and Ulrike Meinhof from her play of the same name. The third play was adapted from Brecht’s The Jewish Wife. All three plays focused on women’s tribulations – as worker, wife, mother and political activist. Of the three Subah was the most memorable because of Usha Ganguly’s performance. As the director said: “It is entirely to her credit that the audience identifies so closely with the housewife in Subah. The other two themes .  .  . are somewhat complex and removed from our context”.13 The play is a breathless and incessant monologue of a woman factory worker who oversleeps, realizes she is late for work, frantically tries to dress her baby for the crèche and prepare herself, loses her house keys and finally realizes that it is a Sunday and she can relax, only till the grind resumes the next day. Her husband blissfully snores through the entire episode. Rame’s play was a sarcastic comment on capitalist patriarchy and the gendered division of labour which puts a double burden of domestic care and waged work on women, leaving them exhausted, exploited and disappointed with both employers and husbands. Ananda Lal said in his review in The Telegraph: “Vama takes the socially conscious Hindi [theatre] group down apparently feminist paths” mentioning that it had had a rousing reception when it was performed at a conference in the School of Women’s Studies at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata (Lal 1991b). However, some Left critics felt that by reducing Waking Up to a play about women’s oppression the director had diluted Fo and Rame’s anticapitalist politics. While audiences sympathized with the familiar scenario

78  Paromita Chakravarti of the harried housewife and mother in Subah, they failed to grasp how the exploitative production process affects the domestic sphere, dehumanizing and mechanizing human beings and relationships. The underlying discomfort of Left intellectuals with what they considered to be a more bourgeois preoccupation and a less important concern – gender oppression – is evidenced in Dharani Ghosh’s review: Had Mr. Chakraborty [director] been on the same political wavelength as Dario Fo and Franca Rame, he would have insisted that Subah . . . retain the business of the woman factory worker spraying herself with “Handy Spray on Radiator Paint” under the impression that it is deodorant aerosol . . . this symbolic gesture of dehumanization alone elevates the woman mistaking Sunday for a working day to a trenchant critique of the capitalist mode of production. (Ghosh 1991) Rame’s second play in the trilogy, Ulrike Meinhof, was inspired by a German Maoist journalist who was accused of political murder and found dead in her prison cell while undergoing trial. The Bangla adaptation of this radical play about ultra-Left politics was again found lacking in its revolutionary potential: “Tapas Sen’s dreamy overhead lighting transforms her [Ulrike Meinhof] into a graceful statue rather than the desired icon of revolution” (Ghosh 1991). However, the same lighting (Tapas Sen’s clinical overhead lamp) and Sohag Sen’s plain white costume design (Figure 3.5) led another reviewer to comment on the universal feminist symbolism of the play and its militant position on men’s silence on women’s oppression (Lal 1991b). Rame’s Waking Up was revived by Swapnasandhani in 2006, translated by Jaya Mitra as Suprabhat (Good Morning) under Koushik Sen’s direction. In this later production, there were no discussions about its anticapitalist politics as reviews focused on the “typical tragedy of married couples everywhere today” (Ganguli 2006), a familiar bourgeois theme. The play premiered with the celebrity film star, Roopa Ganguly playing the central role with aplomb. In the same year, Kalyani Kalamandalam staged Manu(sh)shi (Woman) based on Rame’s Donne Sole (Women Alone) directed by Santanu Das. Rame’s caustic satire on a housewife’s claustrophobic existence, locked up in a flat by her jealous husband, performing tedious domestic chores, looking after a screaming baby, handling a sex maniac brother-in-law, answering dubious phone calls, is given an added dimension in the Bangla adaptation by using two male actors to play the wife’s role. Although the translator, Aseem Das, suggested that this was done to show men’s empathy with women, it could also be argued that this was yet another male appropriation of a female role (Lal 2008).

Translating Cultures 79

Figure 3.5  Vama (Ulrike Meinhof). Credit: Natyasodh Sansthan Archives.

Epilogue: revisiting Pirandello There have been few adaptations of Rame or Fo in the last decade. However, Pirandello has been revived by several groups in recent years and appears to be the preferred author to carry forward the enduring Italian legacy on the Bangla stage. Aneek theatre group produced Pirandello o Puppeteer (Pirandello and the puppeteer) in 2019, an original

80  Paromita Chakravarti play by Chandan Sen, directed by Arup Ray on the life of the dramatist where three different actors play Pirandello at different stages of his life. Through an empathetic exploration of the dramatist’s personal and political life – his relationship with his mentally unstable wife, with Marta Abba his Muse and lover and mostly his fraught connections with the fascist regime – the play seeks to understand not only Pirandello’s specific compulsions in associating with Mussolini but the universal challenges faced by all artists in maintaining autonomy in an environment of growing political pressure. In 2019, Sayak staged Pirandello’s Tutto per bene (All for the best), adapted by Chandan Sen as Bhalo Lok (The Good Man) and directed by Meghnad Bhattacharya. In the same year, Sansriti under the direction of Debesh Chattopadhyay produced both Six Characters in Search of an Author and Enrico IV, using Nandikar’s Bangla adaptations by Rudraprasad Sengupta and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay respectively although Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro was intriguingly called Kothakar Charitra Kothaye Rekhechho (Whose characters have you placed where) while the title of Sher Afghan was retained. Bangla theatre which was wary of Pirandello’s politics but also drawn to his craft seems to have come full circle in these latest Pirandello adaptations which attempt to rehabilitate the playwright’s politics and re-evaluate his art. No longer seen as a “foreign” influence, a fascist outsider to its own Left culture, Pirandello’s plays are now more of a resource in the repertory of Bangla theatre to be used and reused for its own aesthetic and political rejuvenation and reinvention. Sansriti’s new Pirandello productions are revisiting not so much Italian drama as the history of old Bangla adaptations, reworking Nandikar’s old scripts. These new plays represent a kind of stocktaking by Bangla theatre of its continuing relationship with Western dramatists which have now been assimilated as an aspect of its own heritage. For the last six decades, Italian playwrights have provided creative catalysts effecting major shifts in style, themes, genres, dramaturgy, performance modes and ideologies of Bangla drama, provoking productive debates and controversies and vitalizing and regenerating it. New groups have inaugurated their theatrical journeys using plays by Pirandello, Fo, Betti or Rame, challenging the status quo by deploying the new idioms of Italian drama, its metatheatre and farce, its anti-authoritarianism and gender politics. These new Pirandello plays perhaps alert us to the need to reassess this rich legacy of Italian theatre on the Bangla stage. Notes 1 For the purposes of this chapter, Bangla drama will refer to theatre in the Bengali language, both colonial and postcolonial. Although the analysis covers mainly the Bangla drama being staged in post-Partition West Bengal, it is aware

Translating Cultures 81 that Italian dramatists, particularly Pirandello and Fo, have been staged and continue to be produced in Bangladesh. But that is the ambit of another study. 2 See Sukanta Chaudhuri’s chapter in this volume. 3 This hybridity is captured by the title of Swapan Majumdar’s authoritative book (1972) on the evolution of Bangla theatre, Vilati Jatra Theke Svadesi Theater (East-West Confluences in Bengali Theatre). With the growth of modern Bengali theatre, indigenous forms of jatra also changed and the two traditions came closer together as dramatists like Utpal Dutt merged the western theatrical influences with traditional jatra. 4 A celebrated actor, director, translator, who has led Nandikar for nearly five decades. 5 See comments by reviewers in Ananda Bazaar Patrika, Jugantar, Proscenium and Parichay quoted as blurbs in the published version of the play. 6 Personal interview taken on 8 October 2022. 7 After Ajitesh’s death in 1983 Ashoke Chattopadhyay, his close associate produced Thik To Thik (Right you are if you think so), an adaptation of Pirandello’s play based on his novel, La signora Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero (1917). The theme is conflicting versions of the truth told by the main characters, each of whom claims the other is insane. The Bangla adaptation ran for about fifty shows in Kolkata and its suburbs and was later televised on Kolkata Doordarshan. 8 Personal interview taken on 10 October 2022. 9 The Left Front is an alliance of left-wing political parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which was in government in West Bengal for seven consecutive five-year terms from 1977 till 2011. 10 Taken on 19 October 2022. 11 Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1876–1978) was the most popular Bengali novelist known for his melodramatic and sentimental novels. 12 Taken on 10 October 2022. 13 Personal interview taken on 10 October 2022.

References Adhikari, Prabodh Bondhu. 1983. “Review of Rani Kahini.” Weekly Anandalok, March 31, 1983. Bandopadhay, Ajitesh. 2010a. “Anubad Natak o Moulik Natok.” In Prosongo: Ajitesh Bandopadhay: Theatre Proscenium Natyapatra. Kolkata: Protibhas. ———. 2010b. “Anudito Natok.” In Ajitesh Bandopadhay: Godyo Sangraha. Kolkata: Protibhas. ———. 2010c. “Theatrer Darshak: ‘Atyalpa Abhijog’.” In Prosongo: Ajitesh Bandopadhay: Theatre Proscenium Natyapatra. Kolkata: Protibhas. Bhattacharya, Chinmoy. 1987. “Anyo Theatre-er Theatre.” Pratisruti, January 1987: 31–34. Chakraborty, Bibhash. 2013. “Murti Bhangar Natyokar.” In Dario Fo o Taar Theatre, edited by R. Chakraborty, 48–51. Kolkata: Natyachinta Foundation. Chattopadhyay, Jyotiprakash. “Review of Hochhe ta Ki.” Parichay, March 1987: 102–5. Das, Mohua. 2009. “Our Set, Their Theatre.” The Telegraph, April 10, 2009. Dasgupta, Amitabha. 2009. “Memorable 100, Congratulations – Nandipat.” In Rajniti: Theatre: Smaran. The Nandipat Souvenir published on the occasion of the 100th performance of Mrityu na Hatya? 9–10.

82  Paromita Chakravarti Dutt, Madhusudan. 1963. Kabi Madhusudan o Taar Patrabali. Edited by K. Gupta. Kolkata: Grantha Niloy. Ganguli, Ratna. 2006. “Tears and fears of Eve.” Business Standard, May 16, 2006. Ghosh, Dharani. 1986. “Review of Hocche ta Ki.” The Statesman, August 5, 1986. ———. 1991. “The Opposite Sex.” The Statesman, April 3, 1991. Gupta, Udayan. 1981. “Rani kahini.” Baromaas, March 1981, 46–48. Lal, Ananda. 1991a. “A Step Backwards.” The Statesman, March 13, 1991. ———. 1991b. “Dramatic Feminism.” The Telegraph, March 13, 1991. ———. 1993. “Required: More Radicalism.” The Telegraph, February 5, 1993. ———. 2006. “A Double Delight.” The Telegraph, November 11, 2006. ———. 2008. “Cops and Housewives.” The Telegraph, January 12, 2008. Majumadar, Debashish. 2000. “Jotil Dwander Sahaj Upasthapana.” Pratidin, October 27, 2000. Majumdar, Swapan. 1972. Vilati Jatra Theke Svadesi Theater (East-West Confluences in Bengali Theatre). Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Mitra, Prithviraj. 2013. “53  Years On, An Actor Remembers His Journey.” The Times of India, August 12, 2013. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/ 53-years-on-an-actor-remembers-his-journey/articleshow/21769485.cms Ray, Pachu. 2009. “The Best Political Theatre on the Bangla Stage.” In Rajniti: Theatre: Smaran. The Nandipat Souvenir published on the occasion of the 100th performance of Mrityu na Hatya? 11–12. Saha, Nripendra. 2000. “Review of Mrityu na Hatya?” Ganashakti, April  10, 2000. Sengupta, Rudraprasad. 1968. Natyokarer Sandhane Chhoti Charitro. Kolkata: Jatiyo Sahitya Parishad. ———. 2004. Poshchimer Natok – Ibsen Theke Albee. Kolkata: Opera.

Part 2

Encounters in Shapes and Images Architecture, Art, Cinema

4 Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta and the Case of Bengali Domestic Residences Monolina Bhattacharyya By the late 18th century, Calcutta had become home to extensive architecture introduced by the British who made it the capital of their Indian Empire. In order to disburse administrative functions over the empire, they built countless public buildings, predominantly in Neoclassical style. The Neoclassical architecture that was espoused by the British in India had its roots in the revival of Classical architecture in England in the 18th century, based on prototypes in Rome, Venice and Florence and the works of Vitruvius, Palladio and Inigo Jones (Smith 1952).1 Grandiose and ornate features such as porticoes, imposing facades, grand colonnades and high pedestals became the characteristic of the newly built buildings of 18thcentury England, which then made their way to the buildings such as town halls, museums, exchanges and other public works structures constructed in the British colonies. The British colony of Calcutta was the inevitable recipient of such architectural models. Neoclassical style penetrated Calcutta in more pervasive ways than elsewhere. Emulating the British, emerging rich Bengali merchants of Calcutta borrowed many Western Classical architectural elements and applied them piecemeal on their newly built residences to flaunt their newfound wealth and exalted social status. The enticement of the nouveau riche Bengalis in this import was complemented by their eagerness to collect works of art by Italian and other European artists. Calcutta, the capital of the Indian Empire, thus became the 19th-century hub of Neoclassical art and architecture, with an implicit connection with Italy. At the outset of this study that explores the relationship between Calcutta’s colonial architecture and Italy’s role (in a broad sense) in it, it is important to understand the theoretical position of Britain that hinged on its perception of “empire”. It was evident that while the allusion to Rome, or the Roman empire, was an intellectual strategy which propelled British imperialism, Neoclassical architecture was handpicked by the British to suit that strategy, inspiring local domestic architecture in the process. Sheer size of buildings would signify power and permanence of the empire. These DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-7

86  Monolina Bhattacharyya ideas were also soon to be adopted by the wealthy Bengalis of colonial Calcutta who emerged as the dominating social class and built their mansions in the northern fringes of the city. British Classical architecture and empire Prior to their colonial ventures beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Italian Renaissance and Baroque were the dominant architectural styles in Tudor England (Watkin 1985; Morris 1983).2 During this period, there was an appreciation of ancient Rome, but no initiative to recreate its architectural forms. Instead, the focus was on the construction of smaller buildings, with the Gothic pointed arch and detailed ornamentation. However, such superficial architectural approach was about to change. The Classical architecture of the Italian Renaissance was introduced to Britain in the early 17th century by British Architect Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Jones’ construction of the Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619) in Renaissance design and Palladian scale was a clear break from the earlier architectural standards (Smith 1952). Additionally, codes of construction laid out in two architectural texts, Giacomo Leoni’s translation of Andrea Palladio’s (1508–1580) Quattro libri (1570) and Colin Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–25) provided further impetus to replace Baroque with the Classical Renaissance style. Consequently, British architecture reverted to a preference for antiquity and the belief in the Classical revival of the Renaissance models. Over the next few years, many British architects visited Rome, Florence and Venice, and laid their hands on Palladian drawings, as well as saw firsthand the basilicas and palazzos built by Palladio in Venice and elsewhere in Italy inspired by Vitruvian principles of design. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, with the expansion of British colonial power overseas, Neoclassical architecture based on Italian Renaissance models became the mark of emerging British hegemony.3 The latter focused on the grandeur of scale brought about by the use of Doric, Corinthian and Tuscan pillars and attention to delicate decorative detail. The ancient Roman Empire resonated with the British imperial designs. To identify themselves with the Romans, the British drew parallels with them, not only politically but also as representatives of a superior race. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an exponential growth in the British interest in both Classical literature and the Italian Renaissance. British elite and intellectuals in particular derived their racial identity from ancient Roman models (Hagerman 2013). The spirit of imperialism embedded in the Latin terms colony, dominion and empire was itself derived from the Romans (Broughall 2014). The British justified their right to rule by believing that like the Romans, they would bring reform to a backward people

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 87 (Metcalf 1984).4 As imperialists, the British drew from precedents of the Roman conquest of Britain in the period of Classical antiquity, wherein the Romans had brought an understanding of law and order into England. Now in their colonies, the British believed they were the “new” Romans, a superior race destined to subjugate and civilize infidels and heretics and establish ideals of law and order (Canny 1973). Parallels between the Roman and the British Empires were drawn consistently in all spheres (Metcalf 1995). To establish their superiority in India, the British embarked on architectural construction, in particular in Calcutta, the capital of their colonial territory. They hoped that like Roman buildings which still stand to narrate the permanence of empire, their edifices would also stand as reminders of British paramountcy. The legacy of Neoclassical architecture thus permeated the British empire’s choice of architectural style for their colonies at many different levels. By the late 18th century, Neoclassical architecture, an eclectic and adaptable style for edifices with colossal presence, was deemed suitable for colonial buildings wherefrom the British could exercise power and control their empire in India and other parts of Asia. However, modifications based on purpose and milieu, particularly climate, became necessary. Calcutta became the early site of experiments with the Neoclassical style. Architecture of the British Empire in Calcutta The victory of the British in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 followed by the official grant of diwani, that is, civil and revenue administration rights over Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (collectively known as the Bengal Presidency) in 1765 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam marked the beginning of British colonial rule in India under the East India Company with Major General Robert Clive as governor (Singh 2017). An era of new commercial and economic activities was set in motion, with Calcutta as the epicentre. The growth of trade from Calcutta empowered the British to quickly advance from their role as traders to rulers of the Indian subcontinent. Both in Calcutta and elsewhere in India, British buildings of sheer magnitude and magnificence began to be constructed in a Palladian scale and neoclassical style, along the lines of 17th- and 18th-century England, intended to convey supremacy and inspire a sense of awe for the British among the newly colonized. Although the preference for Neoclassical or Renaissance style linking it to Roman (and Greek) antiquity hinged on British justification of its legitimacy to inherit that style, only the essence of that style, and not the specifics, was applied to the imperial buildings. Domed and vaulted structures, arcades, thick fluted or plain pillars and porticos, detailed decorative features, such as scrolls, floral décor and volutes and the meticulous attention to detail marked the most visible

88  Monolina Bhattacharyya aspects of British Neoclassical architecture in Calcutta. Features such as verandahs, projecting porticos, loggias, high ceilings, large windows, corridors and thicker walls were incorporated to protect against heat, humidity, rain and dust in India. The Neoclassical landscape dotting the shoreline of Calcutta was abundantly noted by several European artists and travellers who visited the city during the late 18th and 19th centuries (Bhattacharyya 2002; Losty 1990). For Maria Graham, a British traveller, the landscape became a familiar and reassuring one as she sailed closer to Calcutta: On landing, I was struck with the general appearance of grandeur in all buildings; . . . groups of columns, porticoes, domes . . . made the whole picture magnificent. (Graham 1812) The commanding view of the coastline with its row of magnificent houses justified the epithet of “City of Palaces” long before James Atkinson composed his poem denoting it as such in 1824 (Atkinson 1824), and Kipling had remarked: “Why, this is London! . . . This is Imperial!” (Kipling 1899). In 1925, Lord Curzon affirmed the appropriateness of Classical architecture for British imperialism: In Calcutta – a city of European origin and construction – where all the buildings have been erected in a quasi-Palladian style, and which possesses no indigenous architectural type of its own, it was impossible to erect a building in any native style. . . . It was self evident that a structure in some variety of the Classical or Renaissance style was essential. (Curzon 1925) Of the earliest British buildings, the Belvedere residence commissioned by the then governor general of Bengal, Warren Hastings, in 1778 bore scaled-down elements of Italian Renaissance style architecture that were used freely and randomly (Buckland 1901). However, as the British entrenched themselves in Calcutta in a more permanent role, administrative buildings began to be constructed on an organized scale with a focus on both purpose and image. In 1798, Lord Richard Wellesley arrived in Bengal as the new governor general. A highly ambitious and cultured aristocrat, Wellesley was not impressed by the existing buildings of the empire in Calcutta. To him, they reflected poorly on the ruling power and were inadequate for the effective imperial governance, lacking rooms both for public entertainment and for personal use. Additionally, Wellesley considered these buildings ill-ventilated and unhealthy in the sultry climate of Bengal. Shortly after his arrival, Wellesley asked Chief Engineer Officer

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 89 Charles Wyatt and Civil Architect Edward Tiretta to prepare plans, and Chief Engineer Major General Cameron to provide estimates, for a new Government House in Calcutta.5 Wyatt was assigned its planning and construction with Tiretta as his close associate (Davies 1985). The Government House, built between 1799 and 1803, remains among the earliest and the most imposing neoclassical structures in Calcutta (Figure 4.1). It was modelled on the Keddleston Hall of Derbyshire (1759–1768), but was a far more monumental building (Curzon 1925). Representing the imprint of the Roman Empire in its grandeur, it conformed to a typically Palladian plan. The triple-storeyed building was erected on an elevated plinth on a 26-acre compound and accessed through four colossal gateways, their Neoclassical arches supported by Doric columns (with sphinxes on the lower side arches), each topped by a sculpted lion. The lions, symbolizing power, recall similar 16th-century sculptures in Palazzo Medici of Florence as well as their copies sculpted by Joseph Wilton (ca. 1760–70) on the grounds of Keddleston Hall. Inside, a central hall symmetrically flanked by identical wings in four directions, the Marble Hall resembling a Roman atrium where state guests were received, busts of twelve Caesars common in 18th-century Palladian architecture, vaulted ceiling, impressive columned and arched interiors with openings

Figure 4.1  Government House, Calcutta. Photo Courtesy: Srinivasan Sampath Kumar.

90  Monolina Bhattacharyya that allowed ample cross-ventilation, exterior walls with large windows, and a circular portico on the rear south side surrounded by colonnaded verandah to tackle the heat, all contribute to the magnificence of the building from where power was irradiated over the empire. In 1814, a dome was superimposed on the south portico, enhancing the scale, visibility and significance of the building. Perhaps it was meant as an allusion to the Pantheon in Rome which not only has an impressive hemispherical dome but also has survived time. The Government House, likewise, was going to be the most prominent structure in the city. It would be visible from afar especially since by this time abundance of trees in the Maidan blocked the view of the building. Politically, it signified the permanence of British power. The Government House set the tone for the architectural style of the subsequent buildings of the British Indian empire. Classical elements continued to dominate the landscape of colonial Calcutta and elsewhere in the country throughout the 19th century, and British buildings carried the official stamp of neoclassical style. Many of the architects and engineers of these grand buildings had travelled in Europe and studied the architecture, particularly of Italy, Spain and France, before they embarked on their careers in India. They brought with them images of colonnaded structures of the traditional orders, Tuscan, Greek, Doric, Corinthian, including pilasters, pediments, architraves and arches, which, by their ability to create sheer grandeur, all served the singular purpose of proclaiming the ascent of British status from merchants to rulers of India. John Garstin (1756–1820), a civil engineer trained in Italy, won a competition in 1804 to build a new Town Hall in Calcutta in Palladian style. The building, completed in 1813, is a visual reminder of the Parthenon (Chrimes 2016; Nilsson 1968). W. Nairn Forbes designed the Silver Mint in ca. 1824, C.K. Robinson the Metcalfe Hall in 1844, and Walter Granville the General Post Office (1864–68), the Senate House (1866–72; demolished in 1961) and the Indian Museum (1875) (Stamp 1981; Welch 2009). These buildings in Neoclassical Palladian style stood testimony to the commitment of the British colonial masters towards the Indian Empire that sought to establish and enforce their supremacy in all spheres of administration, law, education and religion, much in the spirit of their Roman counterparts.6 Calcutta’s nouveau riche As the 18th century progressed, the flow of money from a global economic and commercial network due to the extension of trade networks, the growth of the private enterprise, and the encouragement of investment persuaded many landed gentries of Bengal to seek fortune under colonial

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 91 rule. Many moved to Calcutta from their non-urban locales to invest in business and property in the city.7 Comprador communities, namely banians or intermediaries in trade, and dewans, intermediaries in revenue and judicial administration, were recruited by the British to help in the initial stages of administration. Many fortune-seekers succeeded as entrepreneurs and made huge profits. Others became collaborators with the British East India Company as interpreters, intermediaries, moneylenders and clerks. They were known as dobhashis, banians, dewans and mutsuddis, respectively, although often these professions overlapped or duplicated (Banerjee 1989).8 Economic activity in the mid-18th century focusing on a network of bazars or market areas of northern Calcutta led to land purchase and building by these compradors who now dominated the area as urban landlords. By the end of the 18th century, these comprador groups emerged as the uppermost class of the native economic communities by their liaison with the British. Elements of segregation began to emerge in Calcutta’s landscape, with a clear distinction between European areas of settlement and those of the natives (Sinha 1978). One of the most notable among the entrepreneurs of the late 18th century was Nabakrishna Deb (1733–97), a loyal agent of the British in the latter’s conflict with the Bengal Nawab, Siraj-ud-daulah. He worked as an intermediary for Warren Hastings and made huge fortunes and received the honorary title of Maharaja from the British in recognition of his services towards the Company (Ghose 1901). Another entrepreneur, Sukhomoy Roy (1737–1811), a resident of Posta in north Calcutta, was also granted the title of Maharaja by the British for his loyalty (Bose 1978); businessman Ramdulal De (1752–1825) and his son-in-law Radha Krishna Mitra (1790–1832) were involved in trade with American merchants (Coomar 1976). While the De family dominated Simulia in the present Beadon Street area, the Mitras held sway over nearby Dorjeepara. The Tagores of Pathuriaghata engaged in commerce and service with the French at Chandennagore and the English in Calcutta. Both Jatindra Mohan (1831–1908) and Maharaj-Kumar Pradyot Kumar (1871–1942) of this branch of Tagores received title of Maharaja for their loyalty to the British (Campbell 1907). Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846) of the Jorasanko branch of the same family was an entrepreneur who worked in close partnership with the British as a broker. He set up a banking-house named Carr, Tagore and Company (Kling 1981) on a European model, and owned indigo, sugar and silk factories, as well as coal mines. Ramlochan Ghosh (dates unknown) of Pathuriaghata was also a moneylender to the British. He rose to become the intermediary and subsequently assistant to Warren Hastings and became the export warehouse keeper of the Company. He was a custodian of the seal of the East India Company and enjoyed influence with its Board of Directors (Campbell 1907). Many Bengali entrepreneurs of the 18th

92  Monolina Bhattacharyya and 19th centuries made vast fortunes by exploiting the economic opportunities created by the European presence. The service relationships and social connections between the rising Bengali entrepreneur community and the British rulers and merchants resulted in collaboration between them and brought considerable socio-economic benefits for the former. A new Bengali gentry class thus evolved in Calcutta, who acquired land through favours from their British masters. 19th-century indigenous residential architecture The Neoclassical architectural style introduced by the British on the landscape of Calcutta did not remain restricted to the imperial administrative buildings. The nouveau riche Bengalis of the mid-18th and 19th centuries too began to construct lavish residences in the northern parts of the city. For this affluent class of Bengalis, the Neoclassical style was readily available to replicate; not only was it novel and grand, but it also offered a lot of room for experiments with dramatic effects. The buildings would be permanent or at least long-lasting, flaunt their newfound wealth and power in their own society, indicate their association with the British ruling class and espouse the family glory for generations to come. These impressive houses dotted Chitpore Road, the main north-south artery that used to connect native Calcutta with its European-inhabited parts and its surrounding areas in north Calcutta. The most ornate parts in a majority of these monumental houses of upper-class Bengalis are those areas that were most visible and accessible to the public. The main facade conveyed the owner’s opulence and reflected the unique architectural richness seen in the European buildings of the city. Since the construction of the Government House, the idea of an impressive facade became so elemental in the 19th century that Raja Radhakanta Deb (1784–1867), grandson of Nabakrishna Deb, constructed in 1840 a Neoclassical pillared entrance porch to his natmandir or temple. He also added a simhaduar or lion gateway to the sprawling Sovabazar residence (built between 1757 and 1774). Two lions were placed on a concrete base atop twin Ionic pillars at the main entrance to the house. Simhaduar was an age-old facet of zamindari or landlord estates; its addition served to adhere to that tradition, and also to signal allegiance to the British. As the 19th century progressed, affluent Bengalis engaged in intense building activity off and around Chitpore Road. By and large, these ubiquitous, ostentatious mansions were built in a replicated Neoclassical style, recalling ambiguous images of the architecture of Greece or Rome: a stylistic entrance portico or covered porch for carriages, leading to a twostoreyed gallery of rooms inside opening into a veranda surrounding and overlooking an open rectangular courtyard known as thakurdalan.

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 93 The division of space, however, was distinctively inspired by sprawling zamindari houses, divided into outer and inner spaces. The courtyard area, collectively referred to as bahirmahal, was accessible to the male members of the family and their clients, workers and guests. The focal point of the thakurdalan was an altar or thakurbati where the family celebrated annual religious festivals, such as Durga Puja, Jagaddhatri or Kali Puja. Traces of Neoclassical elements were discernable in this area. Structurally, the altar was a single- or doubled-bayed raised platform accessed by a few short steps and entered through three or five cusped or plain arches supported on pillars. The two-storeyed running verandah enclosing the courtyard was almost always supported by fluted or plain pillars, with intricate stucco décor, entablatures and volutes. However, the orientation of this sacred area was almost always built according to the recommendations of Atri-Samhita, a component of the corpus of Vastu literature, a compendium of rules for the construction of religious and secular buildings (Ramachandra Rao and Vikhanasacharyulu 1997; Bhattacharyya 2002). The thakurdalan was used to host music and dance performances (nautch) by Muslim women known as baijis to entertain European guests (Ghose 1901; Mitra 1982). The more private quarters known as andarmahal allocated for women and children and for the dispersing of domestic activities were devoid of any architectural opulence and attached to the courtyard by passages accessible only privately. Clearly, the new building spree of the affluent Bengali merchants indicates a process of adaptation of the available sources and more generally, the prevailing cultural ethos brought in by Europeans. Yet, in its spatial organization, it also indicates a cultural negotiation: of architectural style and lifestyle, of belief and aspiration, of tradition and modernity. In a bid to identify with their colonial masters, and yet hold on to their traditional domestic values, and assert their status, their building layouts had to be organized to accommodate all. It was this process of negotiation that led to reinventing the existing styles and generating new forms of architecture. The result was widening the scope of Neoclassical architecture in 19thcentury colonial Calcutta. One of the earliest and well-preserved and compact residential mansions of this period is the Marble Palace, known for its extravagant Neoclassical architecture and European art collection, including paintings and sculptures by well-known Italian artists. Marble Palace (1829–1835) The Chorebagan residence of Raja Rajendro Mullick (1819–1887) is located at 46 Muktaram Babu Street. Rajendro Mullick was an ornithologist, a botanist and an art collector, with a keen eye for Western art and

94  Monolina Bhattacharyya architecture, and all his interests had to be incorporated into the magnificent residence he wanted to build (Figure 4.2). The property covers a total ground area of approximately 6.4 acres that includes the house, its adjoining garden, an aviary, a zoo and sheds for cattle.9 The beautifully manicured lawn incorporates a pond with a marble fountain sculpted with tritons and mermaids in the centre in the style of Italian fountains found in Florence, Venice and Rome. The house is constructed of bricks and mortar faced with elaborate marble décor. The floors are also of coloured marble. Today part of the mansion is used as a museum which houses Rajendro Mullick’s art collection, to which the family added over generations. The remaining parts are used for residential purposes. The residence, like many others belonging to affluent Bengalis of the 18th and 19th centuries as mentioned earlier, is broadly divided into two main areas, bahirmahal and andarmahal, each centred on a courtyard. The two are connected by a small private walkway. The former contains the formal areas intended for containing and entertaining European subjects. The latter, smaller is scale, contains the residential section, including the space for domestic religious practices. Though perhaps a liberal family, the

Figure 4.2  Marble Palace, north-facing view. Photo Courtesy: Gautam Basumullick.

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 95 Mullicks did not deviate from the typical division of space based on gender and function, reminding of the zamindari residences of Bengal where such division was the norm. Of the four original gates to the Mullick property, only the north gate on Muktaram Babu Street serves as the entrance today.10 It leads directly to the massive decorative portico in Palladian scale. Very high-fluted Doric pillars support an ornate entablature topped by an intensely intricate floral stucco pediment. There are two openings below the portico leading to a reception room on the ground floor. While one opening has marble flooring, the other has stone.11 According to family sources, Rajendro Mullick entered his residence through this portico. Today, public access is through the garden, on a paved oval pathway leading west towards a covered vestibule. The oval pathway is a reminder of both British and Indian palaces. There are fourteen exterior pillars of the Tuscan style that make up this vestibule on each floor, each pillar separated by Venetian blinds and topped with another ornate pediment. These blinds were a Western upgrade from the typical khadkhadi, or louvred windows to let in breeze and light, a common feature in Mediterranean countries, introduced in India by the European colonial architecture. In a bid for European features, the Venetian blinds were adopted as they would likewise allow free flow of air and light, as well as give privacy to the women who could watch the events in the courtyard without being seen. Overall, there is a stark resemblance of this section of the Marble Palace with the Chatsworth House of Derbyshire and the Burlington House of London, and a reminder that all three buildings owed their scale to Palladio (Taylor 2016). Symmetry and ornament, with overhanging eaves, porches, the use of Classical orders, are all used in harmony and proportion in the Marble Palace to create a Western villa very different from the traditional Bengali residence. Like most contemporary Bengali mansions, the outer public part of the house or bahirmahal of the Marble Palace consists of an open, rectangular U-shaped courtyard or thakurdalan. It was intended solely to host Europeans, which was a clear departure from Indian or Bengali traditions.12 A low three-arched ornate altar for worship on the east faces the thakurdalan, enclosed on the west, north and south sides by a two-storied building which has rooms for public use and a running verandah supported on thick Tuscan pillars. Figures from the Roman and Greek pantheon, as well as those from the Indian epics, abound amid sumptuous floral stucco motifs in low relief on the pillar capitals, walls and the arches of the thakurdalan. Italian art collection The Marble Palace rooms are referred to as Reception Hall, Billiards Chamber, Red Room, Rubens Chamber, Durbar Hall, Ball Room and Raja

96  Monolina Bhattacharyya Rajendro Mullick Chamber.13 Visitors, when they arrive through the westside entrance, first enter the Billiards Chamber. It runs north to south and is named after the Billiards table owned by the family over generations. This room is a sharp departure from any Bengali tradition. Its walls are decorated with stucco floral patterns, reminiscent of Italian palazzo interiors. The floor is a mosaic of Italian marbles of high finish, with geometric designs, also typical of Venetian or Florentine palace floors. Italian candelabras hang on the wall, as well as two Venetian mirrors in Chippendale design on the north and south walls (Hall 1974). Against the east wall is a replica of Medusa the Gorgon by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Among other collections of the Marble Palace in this room are Dancing Girl by Antonio Canova (1757–1852) and bronze and marble statues of Venus, Cupid, Flora, Apollo, Psyche, the Three Graces and many others brought from Italy, France and other European countries.14 Raja Rajendro Mullick’s painting collection includes both originals and replicas by well-known European painters of the Italian, Dutch, English and Flemish schools (Catalogue 1988). On the southern staircase is a Venus and Adonis by Italian painter Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, 1591–1666), Odysseus Returns to Penelope by Pinturicchio (1454–1513), Madonna and Child by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferato (1609–1665), Flight into Egypt by Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte, 1510–1592), Leda and Swan by Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, 1477–1549), Triumphal Entry of Julius Caesar into Rome by Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) and a bronze piece Flying Mercury by Giovanni da Bologna (1529–1608). Perhaps the most prized possession of the Mullicks is the original Marriage of St. Catherine and Battle of Amazons by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), to whom a chamber is dedicated and named after. Rubens hangs among other paintings by European painters, mostly copies, including Child Hercules and the Serpents by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Venus and Adonis by Italian painter Titian (1490–1596), St. Peter at Rome by Guercino and Daniel and the Lion by Guido Reni (1575–1642). The other copies of Italian paintings in this room are St. Cecilia by Raphael (1483–1520), Cleopatra by Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (1712–1793) and Mars and Venus by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–1480). The verandahs are replete with European artefacts and paintings on the walls, including a rich collection of Italian vases on marble and alabaster stands. A reproduction of Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) Laughing Satyr hangs on a wall in the west verandah. In another chamber referred to as the Durbar Hall hangs a copy of Sistine Madonna by Raphael, along with Sebastiano Ricci’s (1659–1734) Venus Asleep, while in the Ball Room hangs a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. A copy of A Dancing Faun by Michelangelo also adorns the walls of this room. Although the majority of the paintings are copies of European works, they reveal Rajendro Mullick’s interest in collecting and displaying them, and later, that of his descendants.

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 97 The other rooms in the outer house area were variously used both during the times of Rajendro Mullick and later for meetings, dancing, reading, hosting guests and for business purposes.15 Venetian mirrors, chandeliers and candelabras hang from the walls and ceilings of many of the rooms, alongside paintings by European and Indian artists. Today, Rajendro Mullick’s descendants let visitors into some of these rooms to view the artefacts collected by the family over many generations; other rooms are used as offices to carry on the work of Raja Rajendro Mullick’s trust. The architects of Marble Palace The Calcutta Municipal Corporation preserves a plan of the building ratified in 1931 by the European architectural firm, Mackintosh Burn Company Limited. This company, established in Calcutta in 1834, just prior to the inauguration of the Mullick residence, may have been involved in its construction, and later in making additions and alterations to the Marble Palace. According to the senior descendants of Rajendro Mullick,16 he had invited a committee of European architects, besides his tutor James Weir Hogg, to suggest an architectural model for his residence that would also appropriately articulate his artistic passions; the European architects suggested Neoclassical styles – Tuscan, Corinthian, Doric and Ionic – be blended into the architecture for functional purposes as well as for artistic symmetry and eclecticism. Yet, two projecting eaves supported on pillars and enclosed by cast-iron railings on either side of the Neoclassical portico prompt reminders of nahabatkhana or music podium seen in Indian princely palaces and landlords’ mansions. Furthermore, the attached private quarters were devoid of any Neoclassical features. They were neither ornate nor colossal. These features point towards the involvement of indigenous builders. Rajendro Mullick’s penchant for indigenous artisans is known from 19th-century accounts of Prankrishna Dutta (1851–1909). He employed local carpenters, artists and craftsmen to reside on site for continuous availability (Basu 1991). Their descendants continue to reside on the premises and carry on repairs on the building. Although the division of labour between European architects and Indian handymen, and the process and timeline of construction remain unclear due to lack of documentation, the collaboration between the two is evident. Building materials: Italian marble The extensive use of marble in exterior décor and flooring, as well as the marble sculpture collection, earned Rajendro Mullick’s opulent residence the appellation of Marble Palace in 1909, from the then governor general of India Lord Minto. According to the descendants, about one hundred

98  Monolina Bhattacharyya and twenty-six types of marble, mostly Italian and some Indian, have been used in this house. The entire house was given marble flooring and facing over time.17 Italian marble was readily available in Calcutta in the 19th century. On 20 July 1880, the local newspaper The Statesman published an advertisement by a company in Italy named Italian Marble Depot that marketed marble construction materials as well as art pieces. Its agent in Calcutta was a retailer named Messrs. D’Agostino and Davis. According to this advertisement, two of this company’s warehouses located on 5 Cooper Lane and 72 Bentinck Street sold polished and unpolished marble slabs, monumental slabs, blocks, tiles, marble statues, tables, pillars, all imported from Carrara in the Tuscany region of Italy. Interested buyers were urged to apply directly to the warehouse (Ray Choudhury 1988). This advertisement clearly reveals that Italian marble was abundantly available as there were two warehouses stocking it. Secondly, the marble was of very high quality, coming from Carrara which was well-known for its white marble. Affluent Bengalis thus found Italian marble and artefacts right at hand in Calcutta to embellish their homes. Archetypal Neoclassical-style residences The two-part plan and Neoclassical architectural décor of Rajendro Mullick’s dwelling became popular among his wealthy contemporaries in the following decades. Khelat Chandra Ghosh (1829–1878) constructed his residence Khelat Bhavan in ca. 1856–57 on 47 Pathuriaghata Street on a similar plan (Singha 1861).18 It also echoed Soores Chunder Mitter’s 1856 account of a typical wealthy Bengali’s house (Mitter 1856). The monumentality and décor style of Khelat Bhavan heralded the prosperity and social status of Khelat Ghosh among contemporary Bengalis. The impressions of an ornate Neoclassical décor on the exterior of the building enhanced the overall scale of the house. The entrance facade of Khelat Bhavan is monumental. A set of nine high Tuscan-style pillars carved at the capital with floral and geometrical designs support a plain entablature.19 Below runs a cantilevered balcony with cast iron railings. Two projecting eaves with balustrades supported on pillars flank the entrance carriage portal. Two bold muscular lions, recalling Florentine rather than any Indian specimen, stand guard atop each eave. A hexagonal raised pillared platform on one side of the facade served as the nahabatkhana from where music was played every morning. Tuscan pilasters add to the Neoclassical look of the house. Inside, an ornate raised altar enclosed by a verandah embraces the thakurdalan. The altar is accessed by a flight of steps. Clusters of short pillars buttress its five arches. Double-fluted Tuscan-style pillars separated by

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 99 venetians at regular intervals uphold the upstairs balcony and the entablature of the terrace. The andarmahal is plain. Neoclassical features dominated outer areas of many other 19th-century residences in the area. A massive pedimented facade with Corinthian columns and a range of similar pilasters marked Asutosh Mullick’s residence (1871) on 279 Chitpore Road.20 A large clock manufactured by Cooke and Kelvey of London, fitted onto the pediment, gave it the popular appellation Ghoriwala Mullickbari (the Clock-Residence of Mullicks). Almost in competition for stylistic extravagance was the late 19th-century residence (later converted into Lohia Maternity Hospital) of Horendranath Seal, a prosperous late 19th-century entrepreneur.21 Located across the street on 296/B Chitpore Road, this house was built on a high plinth accessed by a series of steps leading to its main floor. The front porch has a pediment supported on massive pillars with an impressive hanging verandah underneath. The entrance to the premise is through a colossal arched gateway that is topped with the sculpture of a lion with a globe under its paw, drawing parallels with the entrance of the Government House. The Chorebagan Mitra family dwelling (1874) on 84 Muktaram Babu Street has two entrances, north and east, both flaunting high, fluted columns, with the former supporting a carriage port. In the 1884 Tagore residence of 13 Pathuriaghata Street nearby, a pediment resting on massive round columns with scroll and leaf décor makes up the facade. A wide verandah with an ornate cast iron grill runs under the pediment above the main entrance. The grand facade displays the symbol of the Star of India, an honour conferred on Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore by the British government.22 Scattered in this area are imposing houses of other wealthy merchants in the Chitpore area: Jorasanko Thakurbati of the Tagores (Figure  4.3), the Roys, the Lahas, Seals, Sens, Kars and the Mullicks of different branches, competing with each other over style and size. The two-part courtyard plan was consistent among all these mansions. There was a desire among the wealthy Bengali families to collect European art and furniture and adorn their houses in a lavish fashion. Tapati Guha-Thakurta (1992) mentions European ateliers of the 19th century, such as Signors L. Pompignoli and O. Carlandi of Florence specialized in copies of Renaissance and other European art and sculpture manufactured. Regular shipments with artworks arrived from England; D. Rozario and Co. in Calcutta advertised the sale of works of art by lesser-known artists as well as locally available copies of artworks were promptly picked up by Dwarkanath Tagore, Raja Manmatha Mitra, Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore and the Burdwan maharajas, who were art patrons owning a large collection of European art as well. Shifts in family fortunes also resulted in the movement of art collections (the Mullicks of Marble Palace bought a large number of European oil paintings disposed of by the Jorasanko

100  Monolina Bhattacharyya

Figure 4.3  Jorasanko Thakurbati. Photo Courtesy: Gautam Basumullick.

Tagores). The sale of European paintings at the Government Art Gallery also gave the families the opportunity to collect art. Conclusion The architecture of 19th-century Calcutta is a narrative of not only its relationship with Britain but also indirectly with Rome and Italian kingdoms (pre-Unification), and Greece, through trade, art and building construction. Britain justified its expansion over India by alluding to the Roman empire, which allowed them political dominance on the pretext of ethical governance that promised high standards of economic improvement, efficient administration and socio-cultural performance. Neoclassical architecture was considered the perfect stamp for the visual statement of colonial power. Yet, undeniably, the Neoclassical architecture imported by the British to 18th-and 19th-century Calcutta got mutated in the hands of military architects who experimented with different sources for the construction of imperial buildings. For one, they did not follow recommendations for Classical architecture to the core as their own knowledge of Greco-Roman

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 101 buildings was second-hand. Then, they adapted their structures to suit local climate and conditions (Metcalf 1989).23 The results were imperfect replicas at best.24 Subsequent reproductions of Neoclassical style in elite Bengalis’ residences deviated further from the British models. Often Corinthian, Tuscan, Doric or Ionic elements were deliberately fused to add variety to the décor, along with local stucco décor known as panker kaj (mud work) or kopi-pata (cabbage leaf) designs resulting in new architectural forms altogether. The appellations of Neoclassical architecture became less significant and redefined with the passage of time and diversification, being replaced by Gothic and the Indo-Saracenic style later in the 19th century, and the distance with Rome increased (Morris 1983; Metcalf 1984).25 Nevertheless, Neoclassical imperial architecture still dominates today’s Kolkata’s landscape as most of the administrative functions are still carried out from the historical buildings of the empire. The residences of the Bengali elite stand as testimony to the rise of a generation of ambitious entrepreneurs from humble beginnings and their ententes with their European masters. Collectively, however, the Neoclassical legacy of the city not only speaks of the coming together of the colonial factor and contemporary social and cultural mobilization but also exposes the underlying negotiations between the two, as we have seen, for instance, in the use of Western architecture only in the external areas of the Bengali residence, in the refraining of elaborate use of the same in the worship areas, and in the separation of public and domestic spaces. Such negotiations were based on the Bengalis’ ambitions, religious preferences, social beliefs and taboos which limited the extent to which Neoclassical architecture was applied in their residences. Notes 1 On his visit to Rome in 1614 to study the arts of design, Inigo Jones studied closely the architectural treatise of Palladio’s writings on the antiquities of Rome and his treatise on architecture. He carefully studied the architectures of Vicenza, Rome and Naples, along with Palladio’s drawings. He applied the experience of his studies in his design of the Whitehall Banqueting House (1622). The house was built on a Renaissance scale and Renaissance design previously unseen in English architecture. 2 The Tudor period can be dated to 1485 and ended with the rule of Elizabeth I in 1603. 3 Rudolf Wittkower (1943), however, believes that by the late 18th century, Palladianism was intimately blended with English architecture, giving its elements a new meaning that was more English than Italian. 4 The precedent lay in Ireland, Africa and America. See Metcalf 1995. 5 Tiretta, a Venetian businessman, fled to India after a political fallout in Venice. He was involved in the construction of numerous public buildings as superintendent of streets and buildings, and as civil architect to the East India Company (Curzon 1925, 40).

102  Monolina Bhattacharyya 6 19th-century Calcutta also saw the introduction of the Gothic style, predominantly associated with Christianity and church architecture. St  Paul’s Cathedral, built in 1839–46 by Colonel Forbes, was one of the earliest examples of the Gothic buildings in India and of the Victorian Gothic revival. St James Church (1861) by Sir Gilbert Scott, the Calcutta High Court (1864–69) by Walter Granville and Hogg (now New) Market by Richard R. Bayne followed in Gothic style. 7 By the mid-19th century, contemporary maps and literature indicate Calcutta abounded in garden houses and bazars owned by the Bengali entrepreneurs who invested in landed property. Contemporary newspapers, such as Samachar Darpan on 15 June 1839, mention that Dwarkanath Tagore purchased land to build Belgachhia Villa, his lavish garden house. 8 In the colonial context, dobhashi spoke Bengali, Urdu, Persian and Arabic, and acted as translators of these languages to the British. 9 Today, there are some species of birds left in the care of the family. The Mullick family donated most of its collection to the Calcutta Zoo. 10 Of the entrances, the eastern gate is permanently closed. The western side of the building towards Chitpore Road has no gates. The south face of the building has two gates. The only ones used are the north gates, of which one was used to feed the people daily by the Raja and then by his trustees. The other, a large iron gate, serves as the public entrance to the palace and the garden. 11 Depending on the rank of dignitaries invited to the house, the marbled porch or the plain porch were chosen to let them in: Author’s interview with Hirendro Mullick (January 1998). 12 Contemporary Indian palaces, such as the palace of Hazarduari of Murshidabad (1824–38), were also constructed on a similar tradition. 13 Author’s interview with Hirendro Mullick (January 1998); also see Catalogue 1988. 14 Author’s interview with Rathindro Mullick (May 1998). See also Amrita Bazar Patrika 14 January 1899; Campbell 1907. 15 Author’s interview with Hirendro Mullick (January 1998). 16 Author’s interviews with Hirendro Mullick (January  1998) and Rathindro Mullick (May 1998). 17 Author’s interviews with Hirendro Mullick (January  1998) and Rathindro Mullick (May 1998); also see Chattopadhyay 1917, 61–62. 18 Samvad Prabhakar (6 January 1859) also mentions the birthday celebrations of Khelat Ghosh in his new Pathuriaghata residence. 19 From a distance, the pillars appear to resemble Corinthian capitals. But on close examination, they bear only a distant impression of Corinthian decor. For one, they are plain, not fluted. The rules of proportion as well as the details of décor of the Corinthian order were not followed. 20 Asutosh Mullick bought this house from one Madhusudan Sanyal in 1876–77 and had Mackintosh Burn completely remodel it, giving it a Neoclassical facelift by adding the pillars supporting a pediment, and the clock made by Cooke and Kelvey. 21 This house was originally constructed by Shrikrishna Mullick and sold to Horendranath Seal. Seal, a well-known musician and member of the Subarnabanik community, later sold it to Pradyumna Mullick, who then sold it to the Lohias who converted it to a maternity hospital. 22 In Pathuriaghata, Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore (1831–1908) constructed two buildings: the Tagore Prasad, built in 1884 on the prevailing two-part plan

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 103 in Neoclassical style, and intended for residential purposes; and the Tagore Castle, built in 1890 and modelled on England’s Windsor Castle, both in its Gothic style architecture and in function. 23 For instance, the architecture of western India is a blend of Indian and British forms created by British architects. 24 Eastwick (1882) mentions that the design of the Metcalfe Hall (1840–44) is copied from the portico of the Temple of the Winds, while that of the central porch of the Calcutta Mint is an imitation of the Temple of Minerva, both in Athens. 25 In 1873, William Emerson, one of the architects of the Victoria Memorial, opined that “it was impossible for the architecture of the west to be suitable to the natives of the east”. He believed that, like the Muslims who adapted to the local climate by adopting the local architectural traditions in their lands of conquest, so too should the British in India.

References Atkinson, James. 1824. The City of Palaces: A Fragment, and Other Poems. Calcutta: Government Gazette Press. Banerjee, Sumanta. 1989. The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta. Calcutta: Seagull Books. Basu, Debashis, ed. 1991. Kolikatar Itibritta o Onyanyo Rachana, by Prankrishna Dutta. Calcutta: Pustak Bipani. Bhattacharyya, Monolina. 2002. “Locating Identities: Residential Architecture of the Bengali Elite in Calcutta, Mid-18th to late-19th Century.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota. Bose, Ananda Krishna. 1978. “A  Short Account of the Residents of Calcutta in the Year 1822.” In Calcutta Keepsake, edited by A. Ray, 301–22. Calcutta: Rddhi-India. Broughall, Quentin J. 2014. “Stones of Empire: Allusions to Ancient Rome in the Physical Fabric of the Victorian and Edwardian World.” New Voices in Classical Perception Studies 9: 1–18. Buckland, C. E. 1901. Bengal Under the Lieutenant-Governors: Being a Narrative of the Principal Events and Public Measures During Their Periods of Office, From 1854 to 1898. Vol. 2. Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri. Campbell, Claude. 1907. Glimpses of Bengal. A Comprehensive, Archaeological, Biographical and Pictorial History of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Campbell and Medland. Canny, Nicholas P. 1973. “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America.” The William and Mary Quarterly 30, no. 4: 575–98. Catalogue. 1988. Marble Palace. Calcutta: Marble Palace. Chattopadhyay, Dinabandhu. 1917. A Short Sketch of Raja Rajendro Mullick and his Family. Calcutta: Calcutta Printing Works. Chrimes, Michael Mark. 2016. “Architectural Dilettantes: Construction Professionals in British India 1600–1910. Part 2. The Advent of the Professional.” Construction History 31, no. 1: 99–140. Coomar, Madanmohan. 1976. Bharat-Markin Banijyer Pathikrit Ramdulal De (1752–1825). Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad.

104  Monolina Bhattacharyya Curzon, Marquis George Nathaniel of Keddleston. 1925. British Government in India: The Story of the Viceroys and Government Houses. Vol. 1. London: Cassell and Company. Davies, Philip. 1985. Splendours of the Raj. London: John Murray. Eastwick, Edward B. 1882. The Handbook of Bengal Presidency With an Account of Calcutta City With Maps and Plans. London: John Murray. Ghose, N. N. 1901. The Memoirs of Maharaja Nubkissen Bahadur. Calcutta: K.B. Basu. Graham, Maria. 1812. Journal of Residence in India. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable. Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. 1992. The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hagerman, C. A. 2013. Britain’s Imperial Muse. The Classics, Imperialism, and the Indian Empire, 1784–1914. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hall, Ivan. 1974. “Some Sources of Chippendale’s Inspiration.” Furniture History 10: 38–40. Kipling, Rudyard. 1899. City of Dreadful Night. New York: Alex Grosset. Kling, Blair B. 1981. Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India. Calcutta: Firma KLM. Losty, Jeremiah P. 1990. Calcutta City of Palaces: A Survey of the City in the Days of the East India Company 1690–1858. London: British Library. Metcalf, Thomas, R. 1984. “Architecture and the Representation of Empire: India, 1860–1910.” Representations 6: 37–65. ———. 1989. An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj. Berkley: University of California. ———. 1995. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitra, A. K., ed. 1982. Amratalala Basura Smrti o Atmasmrti. Calcutta: Sahityaloka. Mitter, Soores Chunder. 1856. A Discourse on the Domestic Life and Conditions of the Bengali. Young Men’s Literary Society. Calcutta: Soodabursun Press. Morris, Jan. 1983. Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nilsson, Sten. 1968. European Architecture in India 1750–1850. London: Faber and Faber. Ramachandra Rao, S. K., and D. Vikhanasacharyulu. 1997. Devalaya-Vastu. Vol. 1. Bangalore: Kalpatharu Research Academy. Ray Choudhury, Ranabir. 1988. Calcutta, a Hundred Years Ago. Bombay: Nachiketa Publication. Singh, Sonal. 2017. “Micro-history Lost in a Global Narrative? Revisiting the Grant of the ‘Diwani’ to the English East India Company.” Social Scientist 45, nos. 3–4: 41–51. Singha, Kaliprasanna. 1996 [1861]. Hutom Penchar Naksha. Edited by A. Nag. Calcutta: Subarnarekha. Sinha, Pradip. 1978. Calcutta in Urban History. Calcutta: Firma KLM. Smith, Joan Sumner. 1952. “The Italian Sources of Inigo Jones’s Style.” The Burlington Magazine 94, no. 592: 200–7.

Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta 105 Stamp, Gavin. 1981. “British Architecture in India 1857–1947.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 129, no. 5298: 357–79. Taylor, Joanna. 2016. The Great Houses of Calcutta: Their Antecedents, Precedents, Splendour and Portens. New Delhi: Niyogi Books. Watkin, David. 1985. English Architecture: A Concise History. London: Thames & Hudson. Welch, Anthony, Martin Segger, and Nicholas DeCaro. 2009. “Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne.” Canadian Art Review 34, no. 2: 74–86. Wittkower, Rudolf. 1943. “Pseudo-Palladian Elements in English Neo-classical Architecture.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6: 154–64.

5 The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta The Contribution of Olinto Ghilardi and Sashi Hesh in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries Rituparna Basu Introduction In studying the relations between Italy and Indian art in Calcutta, I begin with a focus on a recent exhibition entitled Ghare Baire or “The World, the Home and Beyond” that was held at the iconic Italianate Currency Building in Kolkata, showcasing the art of Bengal from the 18th to the 20th century (Singh 2020, 6). The mounting of this remarkable exhibition at a restored heritage building with its historic location near B.B.D. Bagh (formerly Dalhousie Square), the administrative and trading centre since the times of the British Raj, was an attempt to reclaim and honour the colonial city of Calcutta as a centre of art. The burgeoning relationship between artists and patrons, both European and local, had paved the way for the emergence of art school-trained artists who were attracted towards painting landscapes and portraits. In this context, the exhibition displayed for the first time, among other artworks, two paintings by the Italian artist Olinto Ghilardi (1840–1930). Despite the increasing recognition of Ghilardi as an artist, his contribution to Indian art during his stay at the Calcutta School of Art, one of the earliest and finest centres of art pedagogy of the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has not yet been adequately researched. In this chapter, I intend to probe into his crucial role in the contestation between Westernization and nationalism in Calcutta, in view of the growing need for an Indian national and regional vocabulary in art. By juxtaposing the favourable reception of exhibitions showcasing his paintings and the sale of his works at auctions held globally (Sadhu 2010), with the extant literature dealing with Indian art history of this period, I also wish to trace the continuities, aesthetic and material, between Italy and Calcutta during that period with reference to collections of paintings and statuary, commissions

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-8

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 107 to Italian artists and sculptors in Calcutta, and opportunities offered to Indian students for training and workshops in Italy. Several art historians have studied the impact of the West on Indian art in terms of representing naturalism and realism in paintings (W.G. Archer 1959, 1971; M. Archer 1999; Jain 1999). A more comprehensive study on the emergence of modern art in India can be seen in Tapati Guha Thakurta’s pioneering work (1992) on the making of a new ‘Indian’ art form in the early 20th century. She lays particular stress on art education which attracted middle-class Bengalis, and on the role of personal collections of European paintings and sculptures by the zamindars, who were then the chief patrons of European art. She traces the changes responding to the needs of a colonial empire, both within and outside art institutions, and explores the growing divergence between the status of artists as opposed to that of artisans or indigenous painters of Kalighat and Bat-tala. Negotiating through manifold trajectories, Guha Thakurta focuses on the nationalist inspiration that led artists like Abanindranath Tagore to inaugurate the Bengal school of painting during the Swadeshi movement in 1905, which turned to the pre-colonial past and the Far East to counter Western artistic influence. In this context, she mentions that Olinto Ghilardi had for a short while tutored Abanindranath Tagore in pastel and watercolour before the latter steered away from the Western style of portrait painting and sceneries. Partha Mitter (1994) in his seminal work on art and nationalism in colonial India has also referred to Ghilardi and his presence at a critical juncture in the evolution of Indian art. By focusing on the careers of several Indian artists in various art schools and private institutions, Mitter has enquired into the social, cultural and political climate of the early 20th century to establish the motivations and aims that inspired Indian artists to absorb Western academic art and create their own style. Both Guha Thakurta and Mitter have inspected the private papers of the art students who trained in Italy on the advice of Olinto Ghilardi as well as those of a later period. Taking the cue from these studies, this chapter probes the importance of Ghilardi’s presence at the Calcutta School of Art at a crucial period of change, when the logic of colonial imperatives was superseded by the interplay of conflicting nationalist needs in the Calcutta milieu. In the forthcoming sections, I will trace the way in which Western European painting, which had become popular among the British and Indian patrons and was taught and promoted in the Calcutta School of Art under Locke, Jobbins and Olinto Ghilardi, was then renounced by E.B. Havell, who Indianized the curriculum to promote indigenous Indian fine arts. I further demonstrate that Ghilardi, who taught as assistant superintendent both under Jobbins and Havell and as acting superintendent during

108  Rituparna Basu their periods of absence from the School, diligently negotiated the contradictory reforms. The impact of this is seen in the two distinct directions which emerged within the fine arts in Calcutta, exemplified by the works of his students Abanindranath Tagore and Sashi Kumar Hesh. Inspired by the wave of Swadeshi ideals, Abanindranath initiated a national art movement. Conversely, Sashi Hesh, having trained in Italy, established himself as a portrait painter – a profession that was followed by several artists in Calcutta in the 1920s and 1930s. This story reflects the contestation between European and Indian art as much as it dwells upon the persisting association between Rome and Calcutta within the paradigms of artistic pedagogy. Exhibitions, collections, commissions: moulding the taste in Renaissance art The impact of Western Renaissance art was mediated through the introduction of British academic art in India. Many of the European, as well as British artists, travelling through India were trained in British academic art, and they produced a genre of natural history drawings, Indian landscapes, portraits and compositions of indigenous men at work which created the visual vocabulary of the Company paintings. With the decline of the Mughal and provincial courts, traditional painters lost patronage, and the market was open to European oil painters serving the taste of the new British clientele. The Company paintings emerged as a hybrid genre executed by some of the lesser British painters and early Indian artists who received commissions from British and Indian patrons. They thus produced copies of Italian paintings, statuaries and marble busts which had been collected by the nouveau riche Bengali elite during their visits abroad or procured through their agents in India or commissioned to visiting artists who lived and worked in Bengal.1 This elite circle of European patrons and artists constituted the Brush Club which organized the first fine-art exhibition in Calcutta in 1831.2 The exhibition represented the best of European fine arts: portraits and landscapes by George Chinnery, Tilly Kettle, Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West and by the Italian painter Antonio Canaletto, as well as copies of 17th-century masters such as Guido Reni and Antoon Van Dyck (Sarkar 1982, 34–38; Guha Thakurta 1992, 46). The themes of biblical and historical events had already become popular and one of the earliest European masterpieces, The Last Supper, was commissioned as an altarpiece for St John’s church in Calcutta to the neo-classicist Johann Zoffany between 1787 and 1789. His painting emulated Da Vinci’s Last Supper thematically and stylistically but the images of the twelve apostles represented the faces of local Europeans in Calcutta (Archer 1979, 158).3 This was a classic example of the interpolation of local imagery of Calcutta

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 109 into Renaissance art by Zoffany, who had previously stayed in Rome for twelve years copying Renaissance masterpieces. The Asiatic Society, established in 1784 for Orientalist study, opened its Art Gallery in December 1834 with a collection of ninety European paintings. These belonged to the studio of Captain Robert Home of Lucknow and was gifted by his son to the Society on 5 November 1834. The valuable collection of paintings included works of Italian artists like Cleopatra by Guido Reni, The woman taken in adultery by Domenichino, The infant Christ by the Dutch artist Rubens, Cupid asleep on cloud by Joshua Reynolds and a large number of portraits of British administrators such as Warren Hastings, Richard Marquis Wellesley, Major General William Jones, John Fleming and Sir Edward Paget (Chaudhury 1980, 44).4 These European art collections helped to foster a taste for European art which, with its knowledge of perspective, accurate representation, and picturesque quality, came to be regarded as a finer and nobler art of painting among the Calcutta elite. William Jones, the founder of Asiatic Society, had also published an article ‘On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India’ (1784), which overrode the notion that images of Indian deities were monstrous and nurtured the rise of syncretic ideas in the European mind, so that the Indian gods Shiva and Brahma were considered analogous to the Greek gods Bacchus and Dionysus. Through a study of ancient Indian languages and texts, the Orientalists sought for a common origin for all arts and initiated studies in Gandhara art (Chatterjee 1990, 84). But with the shift from the ‘imitation of nature’ to a Neo-Platonic focus on the ‘idea behind appearance’ as the basis for appreciating art in the Orientalist representation of the East, by the 20th century, the Indian patrons, artists and critics were in turn inspired to find their fine art in the national artistic heritage of the paintings and sculpture of Ajanta and Ellora (87). Establishment of the Calcutta School of Art: Western academic influence under H.H. Locke One of the primary and powerful modes of colonial ascendancy over Indian art and culture was the imposition of the colonial art education and setting up of art schools to shape Indian taste and impart the skills of scientific drawing in art. But the nature of colonial art education indicated a clear dichotomy and ambivalences within this colonial experience. The British had looked up to the paintings and sculptures of Italian Renaissance artists as examples of ‘fine art,’ which was designated as ‘high art’, requiring originality and talent, as opposed to crafts in Britain, and design which constituted ‘low arts’, requiring technical expertise and the ability to copy. English art educators and reformers had admired the Indian luxury crafts

110  Rituparna Basu and flat Indian design displayed at the Great London Exhibition in 1851, in the wake of a crisis in design in England. They thus desired an art education that would protect the traditional artisanal skill in design and rejuvenate the dying art industries in India (Mitter 1977, 226–27). However, the colonial officers in India did not recognize the merits of Indian ornamentation and believed that Indians did not know how to draw; at best they could copy well. Hence, lacking knowledge of the language of art, they were unable to create an illusion of nature (Chatterjee 1990, 76). Thus, art schools were set up in Madras (in 1851), Calcutta and Bombay (in 1854), Lahore (in 1878, now in Pakistan) and in other parts of India, with the intention of imparting lessons in Western scientific drawing, improving the industrial arts and providing vocational education. The purpose was to train Indians for employment in the colonial survey offices, thereby serving “the imperial policy of creating cheap skilled labour, and a group of collaborators – the ‘Black British’ of Macaulay’s dream” (78). The English-educated Bengali middle class in Calcutta aspiring for vocational training had already felt the need to learn scientific drawing and had set up the Mechanics Institute in Calcutta in 1839, under semi-official British patronage. The Institute developed into the School of Industrial Art which was founded as a private enterprise in 1854. The British government took over the school in 1864 and renamed it the Calcutta School of Art. Henry Hoover Locke, a renowned teacher from the Kensington School of Design, was appointed as the new principal and sought to emulate its syllabus while framing the art curriculum in Calcutta (Bagal 1966, 1–5; Guha Thakurta 1992, 60). Thus, a technical, applied and craft-based education ensued to polish the skills of artisans and train professional engravers, lithographers, modellers and draughtsmen to meet contemporary colonial needs (Guha Thakurta 1992, 59). Alexander Hunter, the first principal of the Madras School of Art, observed that amongst the natives of India art of a low and debasing kind [existed and such art was] interwoven with their religion. The educated natives point to the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome and try to find an excuse for their licentious obscenities, but it is our duty to try and lead their art into some of the best and purest channels. (Hunter 1867, 42) From 1864 to 1884, in contrast with the Madras school which focused on craft development, the Calcutta school under H.H. Locke concentrated on producing professional artists. Even as the school developed a strong applied art section, drawing was introduced as a basic study.5 Students from artisan families were trained to be modellers and lithographers. They participated in international exhibitions and joined the school as

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 111 teachers, breaking the barriers of caste rules. The school thus became the basis for upward social mobility from ‘artisan’ to ‘artists.’ Locke introduced advanced classes in drawing and painting whereby the Bengali intelligentsia with an aptitude for art could now find formal employment as drawing teachers in secondary and training schools, without losing their social status (Cotton 1898, 79–86). The students participated in the fine art exhibition of 1874 at the new Imperial Museum in Calcutta where they displayed their classroom works, such as full figures, portraits and head studies of models, architectural drawings, specimens of lithography and wood engraving, clay models of human and animal figures or plaster casts of hands, feet, flowers and foliage. These represented the colonial project of documenting different native trades and castes in the absence of anatomy and life study in the art schools (Guha Thakurta 1992, 46–47). A stronger affinity of the Calcutta School of Art with the fine arts was established when Viceroy Lord Northbrook founded an art gallery in 1876 to develop public taste in art by housing a selection of originals and copies of “good European paintings” to initiate “the right ways of seeing” among Indian students – “so that the eyes of the young might become accustomed to the observation of what is beautiful in the form and colour of all objects”.6 This consisted of the works of visiting British artists, royal academicians and some minor masters of Italy that were found in contemporary private collections and exhibitions, such as copies of Raphael, Titian, Domenichino or Guercino, Rubens and Joshua Reynolds. There were also plans to purchase copies of Italian masters from Signor L. Pompignoli of Florence.7 Northbrook’s gift to the art gallery also included a valuable portfolio containing thirty-eight engravings of the frescoes of Giotto, chromolithographs, etchings and watercolours of the Taj Mahal, plaster casts of European antique statuary and architectural ornament and electrotypes of ancient Greek coinage from the British Museum. Paintings were displayed from the private collection of Bengali zamindars such as the maharaja of Burdwan, Jyotindra Mohan Tagore of Pathuriaghata and Raja Satyendranath Ghosal of Paikpara. This was considered to be the best assemblage of fine arts that was to impart knowledge of a correct academic style so that students could imbibe “European methods of imitation and apply to the representation of natural scenery, architecture, ethnical variety and costumes of their own country”.8 A spate of fine-art exhibitions held in the art school premises in 1879, 1880s and 1890s revealed that the art school students had begun portrait painting of aristocrats and gentry in oil, watercolour landscapes, ethnic figure studies from life, as well as faithful copies and duplicates of European old masters – all of which were put on display. This enabled them to get commissions from local aristocrats which underlined their growing status as artists. Alongside, students in the departments of wood engraving,

112  Rituparna Basu lithography and printing got many commissions from the Indian Museum, Asiatic Society, Calcutta Medical College and other government organizations to produce plans, charts, maps and plaster casts as models for anthropological surveys, thereby building up a strong applied art section. Students got employment in several art studios set up in Calcutta from 1890 to 1900. The Calcutta Art Studio produced oleographs following European watercolour paintings, while Indian enterprises like U. Roy & Co. captured the trade of book illustrations (Guha Thakurta 1992, 78–92). By 1893–94, however, the idea of the promotion of indigenous arts by training artisans had failed. Instead, the Calcutta School of Art pushed students to pursue more lucrative professions in the colonial market (Chatterjee 1990, 79; Bagal 1966, 5). Olinto Ghilardi and his initiatives in the art education of the Calcutta School of Art After the departure of Locke, the Belgian artist Jules Schaumburg was appointed principal on 25 December 1885, and that year saw the birth of Shilpa Puspanjali, the first fine art journal in India (Guha Thakurta 1992, 87). It was in this period of transformation that an Italian painter Olinto Ghilardi (1848–1930) began his career in the Calcutta School of Art. He was appointed to the newly created post of assistant principal on 29 January 1886 (66). Apart from the fact that he was Italian in origin and nationality, nothing was known about his life before his tenure at the art school. Like many other artists of the 19th century, Ghilardi may have come to India in search of artistic inspiration or for a livelihood. He was already thirty-seven years old when he joined the art school in Calcutta, and we have no information about his earlier accomplishments as an artist.9 After Schaumburg’s death in 1886, Ghilardi served as an acting principal till William Henry Jobbins was appointed as the superintendent in June 1887.10 He once again officiated as acting superintendent for nine years after Jobbins’s departure for England in September 1895. Jobbins and Ghilardi seemed to have made a deep impact on the students of the Calcutta School of Art (Mukhopadhyay 1984). Ghilardi, in particular, was aware of the talent of the Indian teachers during his tenure and profusely praised Annada Prasad Bagchi, who was a portrait painter but taught lithography at the art school. Ghilardi described him as the foremost Indian artist, “ignorant of prejudices”, who through his various artistic productions had raised the fame of Calcutta School of Art (Bagal 1966, 15).11 Ghilardi was also appreciative of Moulvie Syed Mohamed Amir Ali of Bariawal of Dharbanga who published a pamphlet on “Muslim Festivals” in 1892, which mentioned Signor Olinto Ghilardi as one of his many European friends and well-wishers (Ali 1892).

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 113 Three strikingly important changes came about when Jobbins and Ghilardi took charge.12 In 1886–87, proposals were submitted for the partial re-organization of the Calcutta School of Art through the extension of facilities for technical education.13 Technical education comprised training in new professional and vocational skills, as well as in traditional handicrafts, reiterating the need to revive the dying art industries. Even though the handicraft tradition had waned in Bengal, the scheme specified the need to integrate the remaining traditional art industries within the school’s curriculum. These included the architectural decoration in terracotta, and clay-modelling of Krishnanagar, the manufacture of glazed clay tiles, wood carving and inlay work of Calcutta. The proposal suggested that traditional artisans be employed in the art school to teach these crafts. The proposal further recommended the transfer of the art school and the gallery from its location in the Bowbazar area of Calcutta to new premises near the Indian Museum at Chowringhee. As Guha Thakurta points out, this move implied the ambitious plan of developing a “Great Art Centre” in Calcutta which would combine the Art school, the Art gallery and the Indian Museum in a comprehensive role of art education (1992, 66). The students could then view a wide range of Indian art – from the collection of paintings in the art gallery to the specimens of art and design reflected in the architecture and ornamental artware preserved in the museum (Bagal 1966, 14–15). This promotion of interest in the study of Indian art and design was further entrenched and promoted by Ghilardi. A significant change introduced by Ghilardi in the curriculum involved the use of plaster casts of the sculptures and decorations of the Bhubaneswar Temples of Orissa as models for studying Indian ornamental art (Bagal 1966, 14–15; Guha Thakurta 1992, 66).14 Ghilardi himself designed two coffers following “pure Hindu style” embellishing figures, ornaments and emblems and these were subsequently used by students as models for study in the wood carving and metal chasing classes (Bagal 1966, 14). At his insistence, a new course on “fresco painting”, based purely on the principal of “ancient Indian decorative art”, was introduced in the curriculum as an alternative to the European style of painting.15 In his report, Ghilardi asserted that it was the former principal Schaumburg who had pointed out to him “the necessity of reinstating Indian decorative art in its original brilliancy”.16 The actual implementation of this principle proved to be difficult in practice and could not attract students who were previously trained in the European style of painting. As a result, there were only eight students in the fresco painting class. Nonetheless, through their innovations in the art curriculum, Jobbins and Ghilardi did play a significant role in the Indianization of art in colonial Bengal, a role which has often been under-emphasized by art historians. In order to encourage the study of Indian art, Ghilardi offered six prizes to the amount of Rs 5 each to meritorious students. He was also responsible

114  Rituparna Basu for establishing a connection with Italy for his art students. Impressed by the portrait paintings of two talented students, Sashi Hesh (1869–?) and Rohini Kanta Nag (1868–1895), Ghilardi encouraged them to travel to Italy to study at the Royal Academy at Rome.17 This was, in fact, the first time that Bengali students from Calcutta ventured to Europe to study art. Their travel was made possible by generous donations from members of the Calcutta aristocracy. A third student, Fanindranath Basu (1888–1926) went to Rome to study sculpture but failed to gain admission in any art school there. He finally enrolled in the Board of Manufacturers School of Art in Edinburgh. Ghilardi’s contribution towards shaping artistic pedagogy had a notable, yet indirect, role in the Indian art movement through the initial mentoring of Abanindranath Tagore who spearheaded the making of a national art. Ghilardi’s role thus marked an important intervention in the history of cross-cultural exchanges between India and Europe. Abanindranath had shown his aptitude in drawing and painting since an early age and was given weekly private art lessons by Ghilardi during 1891–92, the period when he was the vice-principal of the Calcutta School of Art.18 The art lessons included still life studies, portrait painting, watercolour, pastel and oil – the medium that Abanindranath used in most of his paintings. But Abanindranath did not enjoy the painstaking oil painting and his lessons ended within six months, after which he set up his own studio at his residence at Jorasanko (Tagore and Chanda 1944, 68). As a result of his brief academic training with Ghilardi, Abanindranath had painted pastel portraits of friends and family. Particularly, his portrait of his uncle Rabindranath showed him using “a soft muted blend of colours to great effect to plunge the face into a mood of dreamy abstraction” (Guha Thakurta 1992, 231). The association with Abanindranath suggested that Ghilardi was already well-known as an artist and accepted among the Bengali elite of Calcutta. Olinto Ghilardi and his paintings At this point, it would be interesting to take a glimpse at Ghilardi’s artwork in India. Ghilardi was not a salon artist, and only a few of his paintings have been recovered from the private collection of Anirban and Regina Sadhu of Switzerland. Two paintings have been recovered from the estate of a deceased British national with Indian connections going back many generations. Clearly signed by Olinto Ghilardi in the lower right corner, both were of identical dimensions (47 × 35.5 cm) and set in solid oak frames of the 20th century (Sadhu 2010). Sadhu argues that the 20th-century provenance of the paintings is supported by the label of a well-known art gallery that supposedly framed them (J. Brown and Sons, 22 Duke Street, Aldgate London) which stayed in business till the early 20th century.

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 115 Dating to the period between 1885 and 1905, the paintings were done in pastel and gouache on paper and the quality of the work revealed a great expertise since pastel as a medium was not as amenable as oil or watercolour. Unlike other artists who used pastel and charcoal for the initial study, Ghilardi used pastel for the final painting. While both the paintings depicted Indian landscapes, they differed substantially in the nature and quality of illumination. One painting showed the unloading of goods from a boat on the riverside with a clear sky in bright daylight. The other showed an evening scene with dim light filtering through dense vegetation (Sadhu 2010). The bright mood of the first painting and the sombre mood of the second one were due to the skilful treatment of light, in which the artist has clearly succeeded even in a medium like pastel. A view of details like the rendition of the leaves of the trees, the ripples of water and the surfaces of rocks also testified to the skill of the artist. The two paintings which were displayed at the exhibition at Currency Building in Kolkata from the collection of Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) were of a similar genre. One was of a young girl carrying a basket on her back, probably of a tea picker from the Himalayan foothills of Bengal (Figure 5.1). The woven cane basket was the only indication of her social standing as someone from the working class. She was bedecked with a string of beads, adorned with a pendant and earrings and her hair was braided in a style common in the region. The face was characterized by features typical of the north-east. Painted in 1896, it was untitled and done in pastel on paper (the size being 21.0 × 14.2 in or 53.3 × 36.0 cm). Ghilardi’s signature was inscribed on the top left-hand corner, together with the date. The second painting – a landscape done in gouache and pastel on paper (whose size was 18.2 × 14.0 in or 46.2 × 35.6 cm) – was also untitled (Figure 5.2). The exhibition label described it as introducing European art to Calcutta, while also playing the role of transporting the Indian landscape to European countries. In this picturesque view of a riverside scene on a clear day in Bengal, the building imposed its presence over the boats and human activity on the river. There were four boats plying across the river, one at the riverside where bare-bodied local Indians wearing dhotis were boarding with stacks of food still lying on the bank. The two other boats were midstream, rowed by men in traditional attire, while the fourth boat had crossed over and reached the other bank close to the entrance of a warehouse. The reflection of the warehouse on the river showed a bright clear sunny day with two coconut palms on the other bank. The landscape could be anywhere near or far from Calcutta but there was no mention of the place. This was a realistic academic work where the reflections on the water brought in a bit of impressionistic flavour to the work. The provenance of the paintings was unknown. But thematically and stylistically those were similar to the ones discussed earlier. At a time

116  Rituparna Basu

Figure 5.1  Olinto Ghilardi. Untitled, 1896. Pastel on paper, 53.3 × 36.0 cm. Image credit: DAG.

when oil paintings had come to centre stage as examples of academic work, particularly with regard to portraits and anatomy, Ghilardi’s work stood out singularly, exhibiting the delicacy and artistic intricacy showcased in artworks of pastel and watercolour, and carried it beyond mere anthropological representations of attire, jewellery and occupations of Indian people or mere documenting of Indian local geography and landscape through the scenery. The soft muted delicate element in these works opened up the lustre and poetry in Indian life.

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 117

Figure 5.2 Olinto Ghilardi. Untitled, ca. 1890. Guache, watercolour and pastel on paper, 46.2 × 35.6 cm. Image credit: DAG.

On his return to Italy, Ghilardi diversified into using oil on canvas and carved out a niche for himself based solely on his artistic merit and not on his credentials in India. By 1911, Ghilardi was an active and prominent

118  Rituparna Basu member of an avant-garde group of artists called the Gruppo Labronico many of whose members were important and popular artists of contemporary Italy. One of his major works as part of this group was a large painting done between 1911 and 1914 (Indian scene, oil on canvas) commissioned for the Caffè Livorno, a prominent landmark in the city of Livorno and a favourite haunt of the cultural and social elite (Anon. 2018). Although Ghilardi has not been acclaimed and valued much as not many of his paintings have come to light, yet as an increasing number of paintings come into public display it will perhaps become easier to negotiate with the merits of his work. A large canvas titled Rivolta musulmana (The Rebellion of the Muslims) appeared for auction in Italy in 2006, while another watercolour of a Venetian landscape painted in 1927 was auctioned in 1998 in Italy. A  monochrome study of a man’s head done on paper, taken from the estate of Ms  Dhanalakshmi Fordyce, was placed for auction by Bowrings at Bangalore in 2002. Olinto Ghilardi’s work lies in the genre of Western academic art comprising landscape painting and portraiture. His importance lies in his ambivalent position in the development of art education in India and its changing policies, in the evolution of a new vocabulary and style of Indian art called the Bengal school, as well as the way in which he inspired several eminent Bengali artists in building up their career in portraiture, such as Sashi Hesh and Rohini Kanta Nag. The new trend of Indianization of the art curriculum in Calcutta Significantly, after Jobbins’s death, the colonial government in Calcutta did not automatically elevate Ghilardi to the post of superintendent of the Calcutta School of Art. Instead, they found a replacement in E.B. Havell who was appointed in 1896 as the new superintendent. When Havell went on furlough to England between 1902 and 1903, Ghilardi once again officiated as the acting superintendent. J.C. Bagal observes that he was “a true lover of Indian art” (1966, 29), and in the period when he officiated as acting superintendent, Ghilardi, an admirer and faithful colleague of Havell’s, meticulously executed the reforms introduced by the latter. In February  1905, he retired and returned to Italy after having served the Calcutta School of Art for over a quarter of a century. With Havell’s induction, the Indianization of the art curriculum gained momentum with his emphasis on the Oriental rather than the European, particularly the Italian, style of art. Thus, Ghilardi who had served under both Jobbins and Havell with their diametrically opposite views regarding the orientation of the art school, witnessed the transformation of the art curriculum from European to Oriental artistic styles. This new emphasis, however, was not appreciated by all sections of the students. Among them, a group left the art school to form an alternative Jubilee Art Academy where they continued to practice the European style of painting.

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 119 In 1905, Havell appointed Abanindranath Tagore as the vice-principal in place of his former teacher Ghilardi. Havell’s reforms were implemented at a time when the idea of Swadeshi nationalism had gained ground in Bengal. The appointment of Abanindranath at this juncture came to be looked upon as a part of the ‘national education’ arising out of an alternative version of ‘constructive Swadeshi’. It was clearly linked with Havell’s policy of reform and Indianization of curriculum. Thus, Ghilardi’s departure from the Calcutta art world occurred during a period of a momentous political upsurge in Calcutta, yet the legacy he left in the world of art practices, particularly in pastel, gouache and watercolour found its mark in the new language of art propounded by Abanindranath Tagore. The latter began to evolve a new style of wash painting imbibed from the Japanese artists Okakura Kakuzo, Hishida Shunso and Yokoyama Taikan and thereby sought to usher in a pan-Asian aesthetics in the revival of Indian art and nationalism. Abanindranath’s art, termed as the Bengal school of art by contemporary art connoisseurs, represented the coming together of the Japanese wash style and Indian imageries from the pre-colonial past and inspired a close group of students to follow his new style to express dissatisfaction against colonial rule. The trend of academic painting in the European style, however, continued in and outside the art school in Calcutta, gradually regaining popularity in the 1920s when the predominant Bengal school of art began to lose strength. Sashi Hesh and his sojourn in Europe Havell’s reforms were rejected by many students and their demand for Western academic art can be understood through Sashi Hesh’s artistic achievements. Hesh was inspired by Ghilardi to study at Rome. Born in Sajiura village in the Mymensingh district of Bengal in 1869 (Bandyopadhyay 1899, 57), Sashi Hesh grew up amid poverty. Forced by circumstances to give up higher education, he joined as inspecting master of a village school. With a scholarship from Mymensingh District Board for his artistic talent, he went to Calcutta in the 1880s and enrolled at the Calcutta School of Art when William Henry Jobbins was the superintendent, and Olinto Ghilardi the assistant superintendent. They found a great possibility in Hesh’s work and advised him to study in Italy. Ghilardi got for him the prospectus of the Royal Academy of Rome and introduced him to the consul general of Italy in Calcutta. Hesh found the necessary finances for travelling from Suryakanta Acharya Chaudhury, the maharaja of Mymensingh. Impressed by his talent, the maharaja gave him his first commission to draw the portrait of his family member, Janhavi Devi Chaudhury, for which he received a sum of six hundred rupees. This he used to travel to Italy in 1894 (Sarkar 1960, 58).19 His intense desire to study the works of the great Renaissance masters in Italy was a dream shared by many successful students and

120  Rituparna Basu emphasized the Eurocentric or Italianate orientation in the teaching of fine arts at Calcutta School of Art (Sarkar 1960, 58; Guha Thakurta 1992, 74). Hesh arrived in Rome with a letter of reference from the Italian consul general of Calcutta which he placed before the education ministry of King Umberto I, seeking admission at the Royal Academy of Rome. The education secretary agreed to admit him on condition that he learnt the Italian language by the end of three months, a test that he passed, thereby winning admission to the Academy. This was a striking example of an amazing tale of the perseverance of a Bengali artist in Rome (Sarkar 1960, 57–58). Sashi Hesh studied painting at the Royal Academy of Rome for three years, after which he spent another six months at the Royal Academy of Munich in Germany as a student of the special painting class. His entire education in Europe was financially supported by the maharaja of Mymensingh. It was in Paris that he first sold his paintings and lived independently as an artist. Five years later when he visited London, his admirers included well-known Indian political personalities like W.C. Bonnerjee, Dadabhai Naoroji, R.C. Dutt, Bepin Chandra Pal and Brajendralal Seal, all of whose portraits he was to paint. Hesh missed the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy of England in London, but at the behest of the National Indian Association, a welcome ceremony was organized for him at the London Imperial Institute, where he was invited to deliver a lecture on Hindu Artistic Experiences. He had written an article on his experiences in Europe as an artist, which was translated into English and presented by Dr Sarat Chandra Mullick before the famous art historian Sir George Birdwood, the president of the association. In his lecture, he admitted that he was inspired by the classical work displayed in the various salons and art galleries of Rome, Florence and Paris. While referring to the ancient art of Europe he also critically analysed the evolution of the contemporary arts of Italy, France and Germany (Sarkar 1960, 59). He returned to Calcutta from England in 1900 and enjoyed the hospitality of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and his wife Lady Abala Bose. He left for Baroda where Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, the maharaja, welcomed him to his court and gave him commissions to do a portrait of the royal family. He had heard about Hesh’s fame as an artist from his London days. Hesh had also carried a letter of reference from Dadabhai Naoroji who was deeply impressed by his artistic talent as a portrait painter. During his short stint at Baroda, Hesh had struck a friendship with Aurobindo Ghosh as both of them admired French literature. Hesh had even drawn Aurobindo’s portrait (Ray 1936; Sarkar 1960, 64). Hesh stayed for two months in Baroda and though he lost the job of court painter to another European artist, the maharaja paid him well for his work before he returned to Calcutta. On his return to Calcutta, he became a well-accomplished and famous portrait painter. His painting Kunti, published in the journal Pradip, won him great recognition (Ray 1901; Sarkar 1960, 64). This

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 121 portrayal of an epic character was explained by Upendra Kishore Raychaudhury as the epitome of a mother, which made the painting popular. He also drew portraits of Dwijendranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore which are today in the collections of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad and VisvaBharati University. His rich oeuvre of portrait paintings included portraits of J.C. Bose, Lady Abala Bose, Hemendra Mohan Basu and Shibnath Sastri (Figure 5.3) and are to be found today in the Victoria Memorial Collection in the Gallery of portraits. Some of the portraits he had painted were of figures of colonial officers like George Birdwood (Marble Palace collection), Viceroy Lord Northbrook, governor of Bombay Lord Ray, Stuart Bailey, Sir William Hunter, William Wedderburn, Allan Octavian Hume, Pramatha Chaudhury, W.C. Bonnerjee (Calcutta University collection) and

Figure 5.3  Sashi Kumar Hesh. Pandit Shibnath Shastri. Oil on canvas, 44 × 33.5 cm. Image credit: By kind permission of Trustees of Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India.

122  Rituparna Basu of the zamindars of Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh) and the royal family of Tripura. Inspired by Olinto Ghilardi, Sashi Hesh had certainly benefitted from his education in Italy and emerged as an established modern portrait painter in the charmed circle of ‘high art’ in Calcutta. Conclusion Despite making a new Indian art, popular taste in European-style art continued to survive in the 20th century as is reflected through commissions given to Italian sculptors in the 1920s and 1930s. Among the later collections of marble and terracotta busts of the Asiatic Society, one finds the works of an Italian sculptor, A. Marzolla, who was commissioned to do the terracotta bust of the linguist George Abraham Grierson in 1932, a plaster cast bust of Rabindranath Tagore in the same year, and a marble bust of Upendranath Brahmachary, the president of the Asiatic Society during 1928–29 (Mukherjee and Bandyopadyay 2005, 257, 259, 263). While little is known about Marzolla, from the fact that his work was required in connection with some of the leading social and cultural luminaries, we may surmise he was probably considered to be one of the best sculptors in contemporary Calcutta. The Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, an indigenous research centre and local museum, established as an alternative to British colonial ventures, also commissioned marble busts of contemporary scholars to commemorate the history of the times. Among these, a marble bust (measuring 54 × 64  cm) to commemorate Hemchandra Bandopadhyay, one of the foremost Bengali poets, was commissioned to the Italian sculptor Evangelino Bois by the Hemchandra Memorial committee, who then donated it to the Parishad.20 This chapter thus reveals the paradoxical position of Ghilardi when he taught at a critical period in the Calcutta School of Art, producing Western academic artists and portrait painters like Sashi Hesh on the one hand, and tutoring Abanindranath Tagore, who built up a national vocabulary of art. Many of Abanindranath’s inner circle of students, constituting the Bengal school, served as principals of art schools in different parts of India. This enabled the spread of the Indian style of painting all over India. Still, others went to Japan to learn the techniques of lithography. At the same time, training programmes in Italy for students at the Calcutta School of Art continued unabated. In fact, it was Abanindranath’s students Sudhansu Sekhar Chaudhury, Ranada Ukil, Lalit Mohan Sen and Dhirendra Krishna Deb Barman who won the fiercely competitive fellowship for further training in murals in Italy before embarking to England to create designs for the so-called India House project.21 That the penchant for Western academic art of portrait painting and full-life figure drawings continued unabated can be seen in the works of students in the 1920s, many of whom later became teachers of art schools.22 Thus, students of the Calcutta School of

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 123 Art vigorously sustained the legacy of Western academic art. With encouragement to train in Rome and Paris, they could establish themselves as independent avant-garde artists of the Calcutta art circle. This underscores the continuity of Calcutta’s ties with the Italian art world. Notes 1 See Monolina Bhattacharyya’s chapter in this book. 2 The Brush Club was founded by William Carr, probably the president of the Union Bank and a partner of the agency house Carr, Tagore and Company. The first exhibition was held at the Town Hall and included works of professionals and novices. Miniaturists like Jane Drummond and portrait painters in oil like George Beeche were significant. The second exhibition was held in 1832 with one hundred and forty-five paintings on display (Sarkar 1982, 34–38). 3 For example, Jesus was modelled on Father Costantinos Parthenio, a Greek priest, St John represented the image of Lord W.C. Blacquire, the British police magistrate of Calcutta, while Judas reflected the face of an art auctioneer William Tulloh with whom Zoffany had fought a lawsuit at the Supreme Court of Calcutta. Zoffany stayed in India between 1783 and 1790. 4 These are also listed in the Asiatic Society Accession Register 2006. For detailed descriptions of some of the paintings, see Mohammed 2018, 44–46; Chakrabarty 2008, 2–24. 5 “Curriculum of the School of Industrial Art”, Calcutta, Proceedings of Government of Bengal, Education Department, August 1870, no. 45. West Bengal State Archives (hereafter WBSA). 6 “Minutes of the Lt. Governor of Bengal Announcing the Establishment of the Art Gallery in Connection with the School of Art”, 15 February 1876. Proceedings of Government of Bengal, Education Department, 1876, no. 60, 149. WBSA. 7 “E.B. Havell’s Handlist of European Paintings in the Calcutta Art Gallery”, Proceedings of Government of Bengal, Education Department, May  1904, 39–42. WBSA. 8 “Minutes . . . on the Establishment of the Art Gallery”, op. cit., 149–50. See also Guha Thakurta 1992, 64–65. 9 Abanindranath Tagore wrote in Jorasankor dhare (Tagore and Chanda 1944, 68) that Ghilardi had taken up residence near the Madrasa College at Wellesley Park, Calcutta, where he lived with his wife and children. 10 Thenceforth, the post of principal was renamed as superintendent, and that of assistant principal as assistant superintendent. Thus, from June 1887, Ghilardi was designated as assistant superintendent. 11 In fact, it was Bagchi who had published Shilpa Puspanjali the first Bengali art magazine which contained lithographs and wood engravings that developed into a forum for nationalist aesthetic discussions. 12 Some observers have dismissed these innovations as merely “minor changes” in the art school. The artist Binodebihari Mukhopadhyay, for instance, stated in his book Chitrakatha (1984) that these did not set aside the curriculum introduced by Locke. It has to be noted, however, that the short tenure of the principals did not allow them to initiate major changes in art education policies. 13 “Proposals submitted by the Government of Bengal for the Partial Reorganization of the School of Art, the Art Gallery and the Indian Museum”, Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, Education Department, nos. B 21–22, August 1887. WBSA.

124  Rituparna Basu 14 These casts and drawings had been prepared earlier by the art school students for Rajendralal Mitra’s book, The Antiquities of Orissa, Vol. 1 (1875). 15 Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, Education Department, Nos. B 27–33, August 1887, WBSA. Guha Thakurta argues that this strongly resembled John Griffiths’ Decorative Painting class at the Jamshedji Jeejibhoy School of Art in Bombay, as well as the class in Decorative Fresco Painting introduced in the Madras School around 1897–98 (Guha Thakurta 1992, 66). 16 Report on Public Instruction in Bengal, 1885–1886, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. 17 The Report of the Bombay School of Art of 1893–94 stated that the news of Rohini Kanta Nag’s award of a silver medal had been published reported in a Roman newspaper La Riforma (Bagal 1966, 20). Rohini Kanta Nag contracted tuberculosis and died at the early age of twenty-seven years. 18 In Jorasankor dhare Abanindranath wrote of the close relationship he shared with Ghilardi and his family and also with “Mandhata”, an elderly Italian musician who lived in the floor below Ghilardi, who made him appreciate the value of emotion in composing either music or art (Tagore and Chanda 1944, 68–69). 19 Guha Thakurta, however, gives the date as 1898 (Guha Thakurta 1992, 74). 20 “Printed List of the Statues of Literary Men in Sahitya Parishad Collection” (n.d.), Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 180; Gupta 1960, 26. 21 After a year’s training at the Royal College in England, the students visited Florence, Arezzo and Padua in Michael Dinkel’s company to perfect the works in egg tempera. On their return to London via Vienna in 1931, they took ten months to design the Oriental themes on important periods of Indian history, such as the lives of the emperor Ashoka and Akbar. They used egg tempera to embellish the flat linear quality of Oriental figures as it was more suitable for the dome. Twenty-four-carat gold paint was used for the background. “The work carried out was considered to be ‘a successful example of traditional Indian painting applied to modern use’ ” (Mitter 2007, 212–14). 22 These included artists like Jamini Prakash Gangooly, Bhabani Charan Laha, Hemendranath Mazumdar and Atul Bose, all of whom staked claim of their independence as artists through a reorientation towards European ‘high art’, though their themes remained Indian.

References Ali, Moulvie Syed Mohammed. 1892. The Muslim Festivities. Calcutta: H.C. Gangooly & Co. Anon. 2018. “Olinto Ghilardi: L’Oriente moderno al Caffè Bardi.” Livorno Cruciale XX e XXI. Accessed November 9, 2022, https://livornocruciale.wordpress. com/2018/03/13/olinto-ghilardi-loriente-moderno-al-caffe-bardi/ Archer, Mildred. 1979. India and British Portraiture, 1770–1820. London: Sotheby’s Publications. ———. 1999. Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. Archer, W. G. 1959. India and Modern Art. London: Allen & Unwin. ———. 1971. Kalighat Paintings. A Catalogue and Introduction. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. Bagal, J. C. 1966. History of the Government College of Arts and Crafts. Calcutta: Government College of Art & Craft.

The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta 125 Bandyopadhyay, Srinivas. 1899 (BS 1306). “Sri Sashi Kumar Hesh.” Pradip 3, no. 2: 54–59. Chakrabarty, Ramakanta. 2008. Time Past and Time Present: Two Hundred and Twenty-five Years of the Asiatic Society. Kolkata: The Asiatic Society. Chatterjee, Ratnabali. 1990. From the Karkhana to the Studio: Changing Social Roles of Artists and Patrons in Bengal. New Delhi: Books and Books. Chaudhury, Shibdas, ed. 1980. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, Vol. 1: 1784– 1800. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society. Cotton, J. S. 1898. Quinquennial Education Report. London: H.M. Stationery Office. Guha Thakurta, Tapati. 1992. The Making of a New Indian Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gupta, Manoranjan. 1960. Historical Relics in the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Museum. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. Hunter, Alexander. 1867. Correspondence on the Subject of the Extension of Art Education in Different Parts of India. Madras: Superintendent of the Madras School of Industrial Art. Jain, Jyotindra. 1999. Kalighat Painting, Images From a Changing World. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing. Jones, William. 1784. “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India.” Asiatick Researches or Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal 1: 221–75. Mitter, Partha. 1977. Much Maligned Monsters: European Reactions to Indian Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1994. Art and Nationalism in Colonial India: Occidental Orientation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. The Triumph of Modernism. India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mohammed, Isha. 2018. “Appreciation of an Oil Painting of Cleopatra in the Collection of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata.” Asiatic Society Monthly Bulletin 47, no. 1. Mukherjee, Bandana, and Samaresh Bandyopadyay. 2005. “Busts at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata.” Journal of the Asiatic Society 47, no. 1: 221–63. Mukhopadhyay, Benode Bihari. 1984. Chitrakatha. Calcutta: Aruna Prakasani. Ray, Dinendra Kumar. 1936 (BS 1343). “Shekaler smriti.” Basumati 15, no. 1: 237–42. Ray, Upendrakishore. 1901 (BS 1308). “Karna-Kuntir sambad.” Pradip 4, no. 11: 408–9. Sadhu, Anirban. 2010. “Two rare works of Olinto Ghilardi.” Marg. A Magazine of the Arts 69, no. 4: 62–65. Accessed November 9, 2022, https://www.thefreeli brary.com/Two+rare+works+by+Olinto+Ghilardi+(1848-1930).-a0249607825. Sarkar, Kamal. 1960 [BS 1367]. Shilpi Saptak. Calcutta: Banga Sanskriti Sammelan. ———. 1982 [BS 1389]. “Kolkatar prothom chitra pradarshani.” Desh 49, no. 36: 34–38. Singh, Kishore. 2020. Ghare Baire. The World, The Home and beyond. 18th-20th Century Art in Bengal. New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery. Tagore, Abanindranath, and Rani Chanda. 1944 (BS 1351). Jorasankor dhare. Calcutta: Visvabharati Granthalay.

6 Before Neorealism, After Commedia Tracing an Aesthetic Décalage Trinankur Banerjee

With Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), Italian neorealism inaugurated a liberated cinematographic aesthetic that challenged the dominance of studio-based production popularized by Hollywood. The purported novelty of the aesthetic immediately produced a global demand for neorealist films. The noted French film critic Andre Bazin even drew metonymic connections between the cinematographic freedom emerging in postwar Italy with the liberation of Europe to suggest that this was an “aesthetics of liberation” (Bazin 2004 [1971], 19–30). The liberated film form also captured the immediacy of despair and struggle that had gripped postwar Italy and provided a blueprint for emerging filmmakers from the Global South to confront the postcolonial condition cinematically. More recently, film historians have suggested that Italian neorealism was not an accidental outcome emerging out of the fervor of liberation, but the apogee of certain filmmaking ideals that were in place since the 1930s.1 The debate around the ontological conditions of a “neorealist” film notwithstanding, Italian neorealism’s global import has prompted scholars to address neorealism as a transnational film style. Historiographic dissections of the term may have questioned the novelty thrust upon a select oeuvre by French critics like Bazin, but the anecdotes of a wondrous stream of images flooding the consciousness of the postwar generation of young filmmakers and cinephiles alike2 prove that the quasi-mythical narrative of novelty around neorealism is here to stay. In the Indian context, the biggest export of neorealist style has, of course, been Satyajit Ray. The watershed event of the Indian International Film Festival of 1952 is considered the definitive moment of initiation to neorealist aesthetics for Ray and many others. The moment weighs heavy on the historiography of Indian cinema, as that formative influence of neorealism is often evoked by critics and scholars alike to define the stylistic repertoire of a number of Indian directors including Ray.3 Such claims imagine a monolithic, deterministic history of style that not only ignores the stylistic evolution of a filmmaker but also elides the DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-9

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 127 historical shifts of a film style. For example, to brand Ray’s work throughout the early 1960s, beginning with Devi (The Goddess, 1960), as neorealist dismisses the stylistic divergences between films such as Devi and Kanchenjungha (1962). In Italy itself, Italian neorealism underwent multiple shifts to produce different stylistic approaches like commedia all’italiana or in anglophone parlance, Comedy Italian Style. Indebted as much they were to neorealism for paving transnational circuits of circulation for Italian cinema, these films only amplified the global popularity of Italian cinema. In India, they circulated via Italian cinema festivals, International Film Festivals, and commercial exhibition circuits during the 1960s. Through these channels, Indian filmmakers had surely been informed of neorealism’s “death” in the country of its origin and Italian cinema’s multiple, divergent trajectories within global art cinema.4 In this chapter, focusing on a film called Akash Kusum (Up in the Clouds, 1965) by the Indian director Mrinal Sen, I  want to show how the encounters between Indian cinema and Italian cinema after and beyond neorealism can be traced by reading the film within immediate film historical contexts and recover a more complex history of transcultural adaptation of ideas between Italy and India through cinema. Mrinal Sen5 is often christened as the Indian protegee of the French New Wave. Sen’s praxis has been likened to the political avant-garde of the 1970s across Europe and Latin America, due to his intellectual associations with the Latin American filmmakers like Glauber Rocha, Raymundo Gleyzer, and Carlos Alvarez (Sen 1977, 24) and his pronounced fondness toward formal innovation for political provocation. As much as Sen’s Calcutta Trilogy exude an enunciative urgency seen as the hallmark of political avant-garde, his early works such as Neel Akasher Nichey (Under the Blue Sky, 1959) and Baishey Shravana (Wedding Day, 1960) are more proximal to neorealism than they are to avant-garde sensibilities. From a neorealist to a vanguard figure in the Indian political avant-garde, Sen’s stylistic evolution is instructive in tracing neorealism’s residues in Indian art cinema since it almost mirrors Latin America’s response to neorealism. As Mariano Mestman has argued, although neorealism was initially adapted by Latin American filmmakers for a socially conscious cinema during the 1950s, by the 1960s, they strove toward an aesthetic militancy, which identified neorealism as a limiting practice for the investigation of Latin American reality (Mestman 2011, 163–77). I am particularly interested in the film Akash Kusum because, in terms of political ambitions, it is located between Sen’s more radical ventures during the 1970s and his formative neorealist phase. Critics and biographers of Mrinal Sen have often deemed Akash Kusum as an Indian replication of the aesthetic innovations of the French New Wave (Mukhopadhyay 1995, 43–45). Its (mistaken) aesthetic identity owes much to Sen’s repeated affirmation of the impact of François

128  Trinankur Banerjee Truffaut’s films that he watched during the early 1960s (Sen 1977, 90), particularly The 400 Blows (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962). As I will show, in terms of moral or social universe, Akash Kusum shares little affinity with Truffaut’s works. Rather, Akash Kusum could be read as a close relative of commedia all’italiana in terms of both thematic elements and stylistic choices. Flourishing in Italy from the late 1950s to early 1960s, commedia all’italiana is read as a satirical transmogrification of neorealist ethos of capturing the sense of immediacy and despair in postwar Italy, where “the vision of economic boom was all of a sudden scrutinized through the adult lens of cynicism and composure,” compared to neorealism’s more “infantilized glare” to postwar Italy’s reconstruction efforts (Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 30). Akash Kusum’s plotline also has curious similarities with a telefoni bianchi comedy Il Signor Max (1937, Mario Camerini), which was later remade with one of commedia’s most coveted stars, Alberto Sordi, as Il Conte Max (1957, Giorgio Bianchi). I argue that such semblance is not incidental but on closer inspection, reveals visible correspondences with the stylistic idioms of commedia all’italiana. Borrowing Dudley Andrew’s concept of décalage in (re-)reading texts and contexts in film history, I suggest that Akash Kusum presents us a case of aesthetic décalage when read in the light of commedia all’italiana, which could help rethink the debates around neorealism’s aftermath in Indian cinema. Commedia all’italiana and the question of décalage Dudley Andrew’s introduction of the concept of décalage has been a timely provocation to restructure the narrative around “world cinema” in the wake of the global. Décalage, a French term that Andrew appropriates to denote medium specificity of cinema, conveys the productive lag that cinema induces between spectatorial experiences and historical understanding separated by space and time. Andrew identifies two reasons for such lags. Firstly, cinema’s multiple institutions-production, distribution, exhibition, and circulation offer individual historical strands that get entangled with each other across and within national boundaries, for cinema is “at once congenitally national and potentially global” (Andrew 2010, 60). It is the entanglement that perpetually remains out-of-sync, forcing us to consider the gaps and absences in film history as constitutive of it. Secondly, the ways in which “the film image leaps from present to past” throughout history is film history’s constant negotiation with historical temporality, where new images from the past can surface in the present or past images can suddenly become “usable” in the present. Film historiography therefore is always susceptible to interventions from the past, as there are past images that come to view in the present in unforeseen ways with unanticipated effects. He argues that it is due to décalage “world cinema” is a

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 129 target perpetually in motion and can only be detected as a coherent concept in phases. Examining these phases “reveal the aesthetic criteria employed, often unwittingly, to define this quite varied set of films which speak to audiences everywhere, that seem to define a global matter” (Ibid.), Andrew suggests that for film history, the past is hardly closed, but always open to new possibilities and “discoveries,” a history that is always “out-ofphase” with itself. For my purposes, I am interested in Andrew’s concept of “world cinema” as a historical category with different phases. It allows me to identify and historicize yet-to-be-visible transnational connections between films emerging from distinct local or national conditions within a historical phase. The concept of décalage is useful to think of commedia all’italiana and how it enters transnational film history as well as the repertoire of “world cinema.” Italian neorealism’s incessant circulation in the discourses of world cinema for almost half a century has shrouded Italian cinema’s extremely productive decades, beginning in the 1950s and continuing till 1970s, and has limited the discussion to globally popular auteurs like Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. Despite a number of the commedia all’italiana comedies getting transnational releases during their lifetime,6 these films hardly had an afterlife in academic or cinephilic discourses for decades. Since the 1990s, there have been scholarly works in Italian, providing critical commentaries on commedia all’italiana and identifying its generic traits, cultural context, and production conditions.7 But its increasing global circulation has been facilitated by a number of North American home video releases over the last two decades. Films like I Soliti Ignoti (1958, Mario Monicelli), Il Sorpasso (1962, Dino Risi), Seduced and Abandoned (1964, Pietro Germi), I Knew Her Well (1965, Antonio Pietrangeli), and Seduction of Mimi (1972, Lina Wertmuller) have been released by Criterion Collection in Blu-Ray and DVD and a number of other films are now available for streaming as well. The publication of numerous works in anglophone academia, starting with Remi Fournier Lanzoni’s comprehensive study (2008) among others,8 have provided the necessary critical vocabulary to analyze and situate these comedies within Italian film history. The revival of commedia all’italiana not only testifies to gaps and delays that décalage has come to signify but also revivifies the stagnant historiography of neorealism at the level of both the national and the transnational, bringing a fragment of film history “in phase” with the neorealist discourse. The scholarship on commedia all’italiana is not simply a retrospective attempt to define generic elements and identify major figures, but also to locate its genealogy within postwar Italian cinema, contributing to an expansive body of scholarship that continues to challenge neorealism’s axioms and myths in defining Italian cinema nationally and globally.

130  Trinankur Banerjee Key to this discussion has been the development of neorealismo rosa (pink neorealism) during the 1950s as a precursor to commedia all’italiana, a significant corpus of films, which used neorealist premises of individual socioeconomic crisis to stage a farce or light-hearted comedy (Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 34–42). The intimation of neorealismo rosa could, in turn, be found even in canonical neorealist films9 as well as prewar comedies, especially that of Mario Camerini. Camerini has been a pivotal figure in helping scholars unpack the tangled legacies and genealogies of neorealism. As Carlo Celli points out, Camerini had already introduced many of stylistic principles of neorealism in his comedies of the 1930s. His use of nonprofessional actors and location shooting was in sync with his own aesthetic principle of improvisation and chance, which Vittorio De Sica had absorbed during his lengthy collaboration with Camerini as an actor (Celli 2001, 4–5). Replete with objects and situations that highlighted class division, Camerini’s comedies eventually reverted back to the prewar status quo of fascist Italy with divine providence being the intervening factor, a naïve optimism that evaporated after the war. Il Signor Max, the film with which Akash Kusum shares curious similarities, is illustrative in this context because of its initial production as a telefoni bianchi comedy during the 1930s and its remake within the ambit of neorealismo rosa in the 1950s as Il Conte Max. Il Signor Max narrates the story of an ambitious, daydreaming newspaper vendor Gianni (Vittorio De Sica) who poses as Count Max Varaldo to an aristocratic lady, Donna Paola, during one of his profligate vacations. Even after he returns to the drudgery of his working-class milieu, he tries to fit into the bourgeois circle disguised as count Max, often with hilarious outcomes. It is when he is busy selling newspapers as Gianni that he accidentally encounters Donna Paola’s maidservant, Lauretta. Lauretta is suspicious of his similarity to count Max, but nonetheless befriends Gianni and eventually falls in love with him as Gianni haplessly tries to vacillate between his two personae. Much of the film takes place within the bustle of the city, including a crucial comic sequence where Gianni chases Lauretta’s cab on a bicycle navigating the roads, alleys, and by-lanes, reminiscent of chasing the bicycle in Bicycle Thieves (1948, Vittorio De Sica). Eventually, after a series of fateful occurrences, Gianni realizes his folly in trying to win over Donna Paola and decides to marry Lauretta, who has also grown tired of the idiosyncrasies of aristocracy and leaves her mistress’s company. Il Signor Max uses a template that would become the hallmark of commedia all’italiana accentuated with sardonic humor – that of the follies of self-deluding individual (Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 70).10 In the 1957 remake, but for the happy ending, Alberto Sordi’s reprisal of the newspaper vendor makes a strong case to consider the remake as a commedia all’italiana film Avant la lettre, since he displays many of the character traits that would

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 131 later define his most famous roles in commedia. In a reflexive gesture par excellence, the remake also features an ageing De Sica playing the role of a count Max Varaldo who, now penniless, maintains his status by tricking people to buy him food or daily necessities and serves as a mentor to Sordi’s character in realizing his dream of upward mobility. De Sica’s character embodies the postwar crisis as well as an exemplar of arte di arrangiarsi (the art of getting by)11 later used in an acerbic manner in iconic commedia all’italiana films such as Il Sorpasso and I Soliti Ignoti. Unlike many neorealismo rosa comedies, which thrives on collective humor having a distinct choral quality, involving a whole ensemble of characters in farcical situations, Il Signor Max concentrates on the deluded individual as the source of comicality. Analyzing the iterations of Il Signor Max’s comic template in the light of commedia all’italiana is a classic example of décalage within a national cinema tradition. The gaps between “now and then” that marks the experience of décalage is crucial to understand Il Signor Max, for its themes, styles, and narrative orientation opens it up to potential adaptations along diverse trajectories of Italian cinema, each coming into sharper relief with respect to particular phases of film history. Its slapstick and theatrical humor with elements of neorealist style is apt for a remake within the neorealismo rosa tradition, while the film’s emphasis on the self-deluding individual prefigures commedia all’italiana. Both versions of the film only briefly dwell upon the negative qualities of the newspaper vendor before glossing it over with sentimentality, whereas such negative qualities were amplified in commedia without any scope for sentimental redemption. Since many of the filmmakers commonly associated with commedia all’italiana also made films throughout the 1950s within the neorealismo rosa style,12 it was a change in attitude, a new “structure of feeling” that helped conjure the diegetic universe of commedia, marked by a disenchanted gaze toward the postwar boom. Such disenchantment with postwar economic boom was hardly specific to Italy but was rather a global phenomenon, especially in the Global South. I do not mean to suggest that commedia all’italiana influenced the emergence of a certain comedy of discontent in various parts of global south, but its surfacing in film historiography over the last two decades calls for considering a transnational trajectory of Italian cinema beyond neorealist and auteurist paradigms. Italian cinema’s privileged transnational circulation through channels of co-production and distribution during this period provides material evidence for such historiographic approach.13 The locality of the comic material hardly hinders the capacity of these films to bring forth the political within the realm of the popular through an ironic examination of gender and class relations, an ability conducive to transnational absorptions.

132  Trinankur Banerjee My re-reading of Akash Kusum is born out of these possibilities that commedia all’italiana engenders at a transnational level. After Akash Kusum was released in 1965, its content had spurred a lengthy debate, bordering on feud, between Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen on the pages of The Statesman, a renowned Indian English daily.14 What emerged out of this well-documented debate was Ray’s dismissal of the film as an ornamental comedic version of a popular moral fable. Mrinal Sen defended the film on the basis of its contemporaneity, which when distilled to a fabulist framework loses its political edge. For Sen, it was about breaking away from the sentimentalist stereotype of “poor-boy-meets-rich-girl” and indexing the socioeconomic crisis through the figure of “self-deluding individual.” The contemporaneity, as I would argue, is not merely limited to the content, but also a stylistic one. It is the stylistic contemporaneity that had silently slipped by but can now be brought back to critical consciousness through a décalage experienced by the encounter with commedia all’italiana. Akash Kusum’s ability to gesture toward the political while working within a popular framework does lend itself well to such formulation, but it is not speculative probing. As I will expand in the next section, the parallels between commedia all’italiana and Akash Kusum are not by happenstance but results from an authorial awareness about “world cinema.” Akash Kusum and world cinema: in-phase or out-of-phase? Akash Kusum narrates the story of Ajay (Soumitra Chatterjee), a lowermiddle-class Bengali living in Calcutta with his poor mother who wants to climb the social ladder by being an entrepreneur. Ajay is educated, suave, and consciously hides the markers of his socioeconomic identity, including his social milieu. He encounters Monika (Aparna Sen nee Dasgupta), daughter of a wealthy barrister, at a wedding and befriends her. In his attempt to win her love and admiration, he weaves lies after lies, begrudgingly helped by his well-off friend Satyen (Subhendu Chatterjee), who also provides financial support for Ajay’s entrepreneurial dreams. Ajay’s business works out for a while, but eventually falls apart when his plans go awry, and his true identity is revealed to Monika’s father by an acquaintance common to his and Monika’s family. The film ends with Ajay leaving Monika’s house, ashen faced, as Monika watches from the window in tears, captured in freeze-frame. In an otherwise-conventional narrative structure, the abundance of freeze-frames has led critics to compare Akash Kusum with Jules et Jim. Using the freeze-frame as an analytic for aesthetic comparison between two films falls flat when their diegetic universes are considered. Jules et Jim’s narration draws on questions of conjugal morality, existential crisis, feminine pleasure, and sexual liberation, often withdrawn from the urban sociality since much of the film is set in the French

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 133 countryside. Further, Truffaut’s adaptation from the eponymous HenriPierre Roche novel cannot be further from Akash Kusum in terms of moral universe, since the novel is set in the interwar years of Bohemian artistic circle. Akash Kusum, adapted from a story by Ashish Barman (eventually Sen’s longstanding collaborator), is more concerned about middleclass moral crisis and the futility of capitalist desire for the Indian petit bourgeois. Unlike Jules et Jim, where freeze-frame conveys the ambiguous interiority of the three characters caught in a romantic whirlwind, Akash Kusum uses freeze-frame to heighten the sense of irony in the film. At one point in the film, Phani Babu (Gyanesh Mukherjee), the mechanic Ajay teams up with for his business of scientific precision instruments comes to ask for more money. The mechanic is initially portrayed as a man Friday with a smile, showing genuine concern for Ajay’s success. In this shot, the freeze-frame of the mechanic’s smiling face in close-up has unmistakable connotation of malice and a premonition of Ajay’s doom further amplified by his sleazy laughter while asking for money. Another set of freeze-frames also punctuate the narrative to condense the frenetic energy of the city in static frames. We see a policeman conducting the traffic, waterlogged streets after a torrent in freeze frames, replacing the sense of urban mobility and flux with the ironic ennui of a space that will soon witness Ajay’s desperate plans for upward mobility crumble. Such an imagination of the city is again farthest away from Truffaut’s romantic introduction of Paris in 400 Blows, where the camera strolls around the city at the daybreak. Once these surface semblances with French new wave are dispensed with, Akash Kusum can now be engaged with fresh critical and historical perspective. I am aided in this effort by an authorial hieroglyph left in a particular sequence in the film where Ajay calls up Monika from his friend Satyen’s apartment to fix a date with her and asks her out for movies. As they discuss what film they are going to watch, Ajay suggests Divorce Italian Style (1962, Pietro Germi). Ajay borrows Satyen’s car, reaches the theater slightly late, and the couple hurriedly enters the theater. We do not see Divorce Italian Style on screen, instead what we see is a documentary on erotic Kangra paintings (possibly a Films Division documentary), but they talk about the film briefly when they return, remarking how quickly the narrative passed by. A classic, if not the most popular, film of commedia all’italiana,15 Divorce Italian Style ran for weeks in India around 1964– 1965, billed as an Academy award winner and a Marcello Mastroianni Vehicle. From a diegetic point of view, the sequence is superfluous since all the plot points at work here have already been established – Ajay borrowing Satyen’s belongings to pose as an upwardly mobile entrepreneur, the contemporaneity of the premise, the protagonists’ propensity toward a cosmopolitan bourgeois culture, or Monika’s romantic interest in Ajay. Unlike neorealist films, which would often briefly dispense with diegetic utility to

134  Trinankur Banerjee communicate psychological interiority,16 the sequence serves little in communicating any affective disposition of the characters. The insertion of this otherwise disposable sequence serves no other purpose but to inscribe an authorial awareness about “world cinema” within the text as experienced at an outpost of transnational cinema in the global south. Bengali intelligentsia’s familiarity with and fondness for Italian cinema is best exemplified by Satyajit Ray’s 1951 essay “Some Italian films I have seen.” Rather than writing a survey history of Italian films he had seen, Ray took the opportunity to think through the neorealist moment’s location within Italian film history. This brief exploratory essay includes discussions of pre-neorealist films such as Quattro Passi Fra Le Nuvole (1942, Alessandro Blasetti) and even older comedies such as Mario Camerini’s Gli Uomini, che Mascalzoni (1932). Ray notes the neorealist elements were already present in many of these films, such as natural locales and freedom of movement for the narrative not constricted within domestic spaces, even highlighting that Camerini’s comedic style had also changed significantly by the end of the war, where his comedies had become “complicated and refracted by social implications, so that, in the end, irony prevails” (Ray 1995, 124). Writing much before commedia all’italiana surfaced in Italian cinema, Ray was already delineating how these comedies were reflexive of the historical conditions of their production. The brevity of his analysis notwithstanding, Ray’s writing is reflective of a film historical awareness that doesn’t bracket off neorealism as a radical break from earlier traditions of Italian cinema. The circulation of Italian films in India during the 1950s and 1960s was hardly limited to neorealist films or Divorce Italian Style. Films like Marriage Italian Style (1964, Vittorio De Sica), Il Diavolo (1963, Gian Luigi Polidoro), or even earlier neorealismo rosa comedies such as It Happened in Rome (1957, Antonio Pietrangeli) were distributed across the cosmopolitan urban centers like Bombay and Calcutta and circulated for weeks. So much so, much before “comedy Italian style” was in vogue as a phrase, a reviewer in Times of India titled the review of Il Diavolo as “Laughter – Latin Style,” expanding on the distinctive humor of such comedy and how Alberto Sordi is an “ideal hero for such subjects.”17 Sen, who was a prolific film and theater critic during the 1950s and was associated with Calcutta Film Society since its formative years, was hardly alien to these postwar trajectories of Italian cinema beyond neorealism. The contours of film styles that can be drawn around Sen’s different creative phrases have had a common factor – his intense engagement with contemporaneous developments in world cinema. His lifelong allegiance to an internationalist approach to cinema by maintaining a dialogue with the political avant-garde as well as other filmmakers of the Third World testifies to such engagements. Be it the Godardian self-reflexive moments in Interview (1970), the poetic monologue in the final scene of Calcutta

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 135 ’71 (1971) reminiscent of Glauber Rocha’s Antonio Das Mortes (1969) or the presence of African mask in Mrs Mitra’s apartment in Padatik (Guerilla Fighter, 1973) as an intertextual gesture to Black Girl (1966, Ousmane Sembene), Sen’s films have always absorbed all kinds of aesthetic impulses that could be grouped under the aegis of “world cinema,” circulating transnationally through circuits of cinephilia and cultural exchange such as film festivals and film societies. The moviegoing sequence in Akash Kusum can then be read as an authorial desire to not only inscribe a sense of contemporaneity in the diegetic world by staging the couple’s visit to watch a contemporary film but also place the text itself “in phase” with the stylistic currents of “world cinema.” As I will argue, Akash Kusum’s contemporaneity goes beyond mere textual allusions since it utilizes a number of tropes and narrative styles that defined commedia all’italiana. As much as the film resembles Il Signor Max (or Il Conte Max) in terms of narrative, it is the emphasis on certain tropes and satirical humor in Akash Kusum rather than staging a straightforward farce like its Italian counterparts that forces us to reconsider its phasic location in world cinema.18 If décalage, as Andrew suggests, repositions our understanding of cinema at a historical moment, then it is our delayed encounter with commedia all’italiana that helps to (re)locate Akash Kusum’s contemporaneity. A key point of intersection between Akash Kusum and commedia films is the function of conspicuous consumption in the narrative – in both advancing the plot points and crystallizing a critique of the economic boom. Among the many indexes of conspicuous consumption in Commedia, the private car is one of the most recurring, if not the most potent, objects. The use of cars to indicate class difference is hardly a novelty. In Il Signor Max, as Gianni chases Lauretta, sitting in Donna Paola’s car, on a bicycle, the slapstick chase affirms Gianni’s actual class position by pitting the bicycle against the car. In commedia, however, cars mobilize a repertoire of meanings, allusions, and interpretations to satirical ends, hitherto absent in Italian cinema. In commedia, the private car becomes a metonymic device to explicate a range of structural problems concerning the socioeconomic conditions of Italian life. Multiple scholars have noted how commedia’s use of cars as a narrative device coincided with the economic boom in Italy and the steep increase in production of affordable cars, namely the iconic Fiat 500 and Fiat 600 series.19 Alongside the affordable vehicles, the simultaneous proliferation of luxury vehicles meant that it soon became the most visible marker of social class in public. In iconic commedia films such as Il Sorpasso and Una Vita Difficile (1961, Dino Risi), private cars convey not only a cosmopolitan masculinity in sync with global capitalist progress but also an accelerated social and spatial mobility premised upon competitive individualism (Fullwood 2015, 143–61).20 In many of the commedia films, private cars are used to demarcate a mobile and exclusive

136  Trinankur Banerjee semi-private space, a prerequisite for accessing certain social spaces and initiating interactions with the affluent class (Gunsberg 2005, 77–84). Cars also have a distinct association with superficiality and surface in commedia in films ranging from Il Boom (1963, Vittorio De Sica) to Il Giovedi (1963, Dino Risi). Even in I Knew Her Well, a film where cars are marginal to the narrative, the final sequence of the film shows Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) driving back to her apartment at daybreak with a slight smile on her face that bears little hint of her suicide moments later. The deceptive quality of her affective state, associated with driving, amplifies the final moment of tragedy. In Indian cinema, cars and trains have long been associated with industrial modernity, where arriving somewhere by car or train is a metonymic device for signifying the advent of modernity.21 It is the nature of narrative agency given to the private car in Akash Kusum that sets it apart from its precedents. Although Satyen is the owner, Ajay is the primary user of Satyen’s private car. The private car confirms Ajay’s purported social class in front of Monika’s parents, facilitates a semi-private space for Ajay and Monika’s romance, and helps in sustaining their urban adventures by allowing them to wander around the city. His dependency on the car for his romantic liaison produces numerous awkward humorous situations, especially when he nearly misses his date with Monika because Satyen returns with the car slightly later than promised. The car’s social function is best conveyed in the sequence where Ajay and Phani Babu are discussing business at a roadside tea-stall when Ajay suddenly spots Monika in her private car. Ajay ducks under a power box, pretending to be coughing from accidentally inhaling the cigarette smoke, until Monika leaves. Later on, he fabricates a story to Monika about chasing her in his car, much to Monika’s amusement. In this sequence, being on the street with others only increases the potential ignominy of being outside the car, with the car forming a social boundary between the common public and the exclusive individual. It is the boundary function of the car that commedia all’italiana so frequently used for comedic purposes that becomes prominent in Akash Kusum. Ajay’s identity is not forged by the borrowed car alone, but he borrows everything from his childhood friend Satyen – from his suits to his apartment, even changing the owner’s name at the apartment entrance. In this, Akash Kusum shares significant common ground with Il Signor Max as well as Il Conte Max. Ajay’s desperate attempts to uphold a genteel façade in front of Monika and her family by concealing his working-class identity has many parallels with Gianni’s impersonation of Max Varaldo the aristocrat in front of Donna Paola. In Il Conte Max, the presence of an actual Max Varaldo played by De Sica hardly complicates the plot apart from adding to the comic potential, much of which comes from De Sica’s lessons

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 137 of aristocratic sprezzatura to the callow Alberto for his dream vacation. De Sica’s performance as Sordi’s mentor is limited in its scope, for the character of Count Max disappears from the narrative once Sordi’s character goes for the extravagant holiday and impersonates Count Max. De Sica’s only appearance of significance later on is at the very end of the film, again to provide a comic moment as Sordi bids goodbye to De Sica by accidentally referring him as Count Max in front of Lauretta and realizes his faux pas, only to see Lauretta oblivious to it. It is the ‘typicality’ of mentor-mentee dynamics in this comedy of impersonation that commedia all’italiana picks up to give it a caustic mold, examining the structuring elements of such homosocial bonding. In films such as Il Sorpasso, Il Giovedi, I Soliti Ignoti, the interpersonal dynamics of homosociality22 vital to the narrative has an analytical quality in investigating postwar Italian masculinity and socioeconomic relations. In Il Sorpasso¸ for example, the unlikely bonding between the extrovert Bruno (Vittorio Gassman) and meekly Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is neither a linear development of two polar opposites eventually meeting each other half-way nor does Bruno’s company lead to Roberto’s passive absorption of the carefree social attitude. The narrative’s attitude toward these two characters is that of revelation, but not redemption. Roberto’s death in the final moments happens because Roberto mimics (and exaggerates) Bruno’s jaunty attitude, which surprises even Bruno before the fatal crash. Impersonation may have many possibilities, ranging from borrowed identity, mimicry of an attitude to performative concealment of intentions, but commedia always redirects them to satirical ends to underline the vanity of such impersonation. Satyen’s role in Akash Kusum may not be that of a mentor to Ajay, but his failed attempt to be the voice of reason to the “self-deluding individual” that is Ajay is key to the film’s denouement. Their camaraderie does not become a diegetic pretext to recount a sentimentalist version of “rich-friend-helping-poor-friend” since Satyen remains skeptical of Ajay’s venturous optimism. Ajay continues to take over his apartment, eventually hosting Monika’s family for an evening there with his name card at the entrance, as their friendship meanders through conflicts and tensions. From being a curious bystander-participant in Ajay’s deceptive game of impersonation, Satyen grows increasingly perturbed by Ajay’s web of lies and his business nexus with the mechanic, Phani Babu, leading to a brief conflict between them. The polarity of their attitudes, Satyen’s cautious skepticism against Ajay’s uncritical conviction about the economic boom on the horizon, comes through in the narrative as a distinct outcome of their socioeconomic difference. During their standoff, Ajay’s retorts are marked by a distinct lack of class consciousness, whereas Satyen, despite having a white-collar job, is less convinced about Ajay’s vision of success.

138  Trinankur Banerjee Ajay argues that hustling at an early phase would guarantee success later, believing in the logic of free market, whereas Satyen reminds Ajay that the market is only ‘free’ for the big capital. Ajay’s denial of his petit-bourgeois existence, when read against Satyen’s pragmatism, provides their relationship the same analytical quality that marks the male interpersonal relations in commedia. In Satyen’s failure to rescue Ajay’s business or instill moral compunction, there is an authorial reluctance to grant any narrative agency to Satyen beyond his function in the analytical process. If Ajay is representative of the selfish aspiration of the petit bourgeois for upward mobility, then Satyen’s failure repudiates the redemptive power of capital in addressing the crisis, stressing on the urgency of class consciousness. Far from being a simple description of a crisis, the authorial intention to analyze the crisis by examining social relations within a diegetic universe in Akash Kusum resonates well with the “analytical form of ‘social autopsy’ ” (Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 50) performed by the commedia all’italiana films. Be it the illusory nature of economic boom in Italy or the misplaced panegyric for a mixed economy in India through indigenous capital, the grounds for the shifting nature of the discontent was already palpable transnationally before its more radical forms emerged in the late 1960s. As Aashish Rajadhyaksha has noted, neorealism’s ability to convey everyday existence and instill a consciousness about the problem was limited by its reliance on realist typage (Rajadhyaksha 1982, 27).23 Neorealism’s limits were in detecting the problem without a capacity for dissection. The movement from neorealism to commedia all’italiana via neorealismo rosa becomes instructive in this regard. Instead of dissipating the political charge accumulated by means of neorealist premise through farcical scenarios and sentimental resolutions in neorealismo rosa, commedia accentuated the political charge by performing satirical analysis of social relations and situations through a mobilization of popular tropes, themes, and stars.24 Sen’s emphasis on the conflictual aspects of interpersonal relations in Akash Kusum, which analyzed social difference while relying on the popular premise of romantic melodrama and recognized stars, places the film squarely within its contemporaries in film history, especially commedia all’italiana. Although the conflict between Ajay and Satyen is very different from the dialectical force that characterizes the conflicts in Sen’s more explicitly political films in the 1970s, Akash Kusum is no less contemporary than any of his films precisely for what it does – analyzing the discontent by popular formal means. Conclusion: a germinal historiography My effort to bring Akash Kusum in phase with commedia all’italiana is neither a conjectural exploration of film history nor should it be read as an

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 139 isolated example, but as a germinal historiographic approach. The global purchase of Italian neorealism may still dominate Italian cinema’s transnational identity, but the generic excursions of Italian cinema across the world, be it the peplums or spaghetti westerns, had considerable influence over filmmakers and industries alike. Including commedia all’italiana to that repertoire of genres opens up unexplored historiographic avenues regarding the globality of Italian cinema. If, according to Andrew, world cinema can be understood through five phases – cosmopolitan, national, federated, world, and global – then décalage forces us to rethink the relations and the apparent discontinuities between these phases. The emergence of commedia in the historiographic discourse as a mutative form of neorealism and its transnational circulation is a classic example of why décalage remains important as a methodological provocation to remain alert to the shifting contours of transnational film history. Rather than hastily ascribing influences of neorealism or French new wave on these films, placing their films within a contemporaneous transnational paradigm may throw up connections that only such a décalage can produce. Simultaneously, the Indian iterations of the global category called art cinema requires a more expansive transnational approach than already in place. The channels through which commedia all’italiana circulated in India during the 1950s–60s and the available promotional material reveal a circulation beyond the recognized circuits of cinephilia, begging a historiographic intervention regarding the distribution and exhibition of Italian cinema. Such cultural exchanges were not merely cinephilic interventions but embedded in historical strategies of cultural diplomacy. A deep excavation of these exchanges through the analytic of cultural diplomacy can provide a geopolitical grounding to Indian cinema’s general affinity toward Italian cinema’s aesthetic inclinations. Such an approach invites us to come out of the aegis of neorealism and venture into the wider field of Italian cinema circulating in the Indian public sphere – a historiographic expedition that still has much to scale. Notes 1 See Di Nolfo 2002. The chapter is a comprehensive account on the debate around neorealism’s vaunted singularity. Di Nolfo points out how any ontological discussion of neorealism without paying attention to its genealogies will produce historical fallacies. In particular, he singles out French and following them, American critics for mistakenly identifying it with an “aesthetics of liberation.” 2 This is a key aspect of neorealism’s extraordinary popularity. It attracted the interest of everyone in the film community, opening up a new aesthetic vision for everyone. Figures as diverse as Andre Bazin, Satyajit Ray, Glauber Rocha, and Julio Garcia Espinosa were all inspired by neorealism during their formative years.

140  Trinankur Banerjee 3 Neorealism served as an influence for figures as diverse as Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray. Bimal Roy was a champion of social realism and psychological realism, whereas Ray’s approach to realism was always through a modernist detour that involved intense abstraction through images. 4 In 1959, there was a four-day Italian film festival in Bombay organized by Unitalia Films, which had diverse genres of Italian films, including sword-andsandals films and a neorealismo rosa comedy by Dino Risi, among others. Delegates included figures like Alberto Lattuada and Dino Risi, two key figures of postwar Italian cinema. These kinds of cultural exchanges show that Indian filmmakers and cinephiles were familiar with contemporaneous trends in Italian cinema as well as the shifting styles within postwar Italian cinema. See “Italian Film Team,” The Times of India, April 19, 1959, 3. 5 Mrinal Sen, a Bengali filmmaker contemporary to Satyajit Ray, is widely regarded as the pioneering figure of Indian New Wave with his film Bhuvan Shome (1969). A committed Marxist, Sen brought forth a tradition of didactic political cinema in India with his Calcutta Trilogy – Interview (1971), Calcutta ‘71 (1972), and Padatik (Guerilla Fighter, 1973). Much like Ray, Sen won awards in numerous festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Moscow, and Karlovy Vary, but did not manage to achieve a sustained circulation like Ray. 6 Many of the Italian films of this era were often US-Italian or French-Italian coproductions, leading to transnational circulations. Commedia was no exception. For example, see “Dino Risi’s ‘The Easy Life,’ Italian Comedy Drama, Arrives,” The New York Times, December 23, 1963, accessed August 24, 2021, https:// www.nytimes.com/1963/12/23/archives/dino-risis-the-easy-life-italian-comedydrama-arrives.html. Il Sorpasso, one of commedia’s iconic films, was just one of the many films that would circulate across the global cultural centers. 7 One of the most comprehensive and earliest academic study of commedia all’italiana in Italian was Giacovelli 1990, although there was already a number of survey works on numerous filmmakers associated with the genre by the 1990s. 8 For an analysis of commedia from the perspective of gender, see Fullwood 2015. The author expands the scope of scholarship on commedia by analyzing these films as different forms of critique of Italian masculinity and beyond. 9 The most popular example of this tendency can be found in the iconic scene of Rome, Open City (1945, Roberto Rossellini), where Don Pedro (Aldo Fabrizi) hits the noisy grandfather with a pan when the grandfather refuses to shut up as the police surrounds the house. Such kind of humor would become common in neorealismo rosa. 10 This particular character trope was key to commedia’s ability to work with a range of different stars as the narrative would mold the star into the requisite frame of the “self-deluding individual.” 11 Fournier Lanzoni expands on this “art of getting by” as a trope in Italian farce since Bocaccio but notes how it becomes historically relevant with postwar Italy and provided a popular comic vocabulary that could be shared between audience and comic performers. It is the conflict between an appearance and reality that this trope so masterfully connotes that provides a ground for commedia’s critique of Italian masculinity. See Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 68–77. 12 Filmmakers like Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Alberto Lattuada, Antonio Pietrangeli, and Luigi Comencini – all of whom would go on to make some of the defining films of commedia all’italiana – either debuted in the neorealismo rosa tradition or worked extensively during this period. 13 To take an example at random, Valentina Vitali notes how diverse genres of Italian cinema – the peplum or sword-and-sandals, the spaghetti westerns, the

Before Neorealism, After Commedia 141 comedies – were all in circulation in India due to the presence of American distributors and cheap availability of these prints from these distributors. Vitali shows how these genre films had influenced multiple generic practices. For a detailed discussion of Italian peplum’s influence on Hindi action films, see Vitali 2008, 140–70. 14 The complete exchange of letters, with quips by other readers during the heated exchange, has been printed in Basu and Dasgupta 1992 (see “Akash Kusum” 33–51). 15 In fact, the name of the genre itself is a spin on the film’s name. 16 The most famous discussion in this regard is in Andre Bazin’s essay on Umberto D (1952, Vittorio De Sica), “Umberto D: A Great Work,” where Bazin talks about how Maria’s lonely existence, where she wanders around looking at objects inside and outside the kitchen and doing random chores, is conveyed by those few moments of no diegetic significance. The scene becomes important only when Umberto enters the kitchen, and the spectator realizes that they share the loneliness. See Bazin 2004, 79–82. 17 See “Laughter – Latin Style,” Times of India, July 6, 1967, accessed August 27, 2021, https://www.proquest.com/hnptimesofindia/docview/741144268/fulltext PDF/B1132DAB8F01480APQ/1?accountid=14522. 18 Even in the review of the film in the noted daily The Statesman, the in-house film critic noted how the film employs “surreal” and “absurd” humor to underline the impossibility of romance. The emphasis on denying a romantic or sentimental resolution was also praised, although the critic opined that the ending was compromised compared to the rest of the film. See Basu and Dasgupta 1992, 33–34. 19 See Fournier Lanzoni 2008, 54–57, and Fullwood 2015, 129–33, for a comprehensive discussion about the rise of automobiles as part of the conspicuous consumption boom during 1958–1965. 20 Fullwood argues that in commedia, the ways in which male bodies are framed in the cars assert a sense of individual command over a space, enabling a new discourse of masculinity now entwined with mobility. 21 The examples are too many to elaborate. To take an example at random, the Fearless Nadia films by Wadia Movietone in the 1930s frequently staged much of their action in rail tracks, rail stations, and often used speed and mobility as indexes of industrial modernity, with Nadia’s body mediating the process of bringing aspects of modernity onto screen that previously remained outside it. For a more detailed discussion, see Vitali 2008, 100–15. 22 Andrea Bini’s book-length study on the aspect of male anxiety and the gendered dimensions of relationships in commedia notes how many of these films derive their premise from the American buddy comedies, but they undergo a radical transformation under the vernacular situations they navigate. The crisis of masculinity, fetishization of certain aspects of cultural life, and the injunction to enjoyment that characterized Italian sociality of the 1960s shaped commedia’s propensity for the analytical approach to screen relationships (Bini 2015, 145–83). 23 Rajadhyaksha’s observation comes in the context of epic tradition in Ritwik Ghatak’s oeuvre, but the same observation can also be made about Sen, who was also influenced by Brechtian method and its growing currency in the political avant-garde of Europe and Latin America. 24 Commedia all’italiana was not merely about mobilizing the popular appeal of comedy to address political concerns, often picking up the taboo/risqué elements of Italian social life for analysis, but its success must also be attributed to

142  Trinankur Banerjee the use of popular stars like Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi, and even Marcello Mastroianni, many of whom were not just stars of Italian cinema but internationally recognizable figures.

References Andrew, Dudley. 2010. “Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema.” In World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, edited by N. Durovicova and K. Newman, 59–89. New York: Routledge. Basu, Shakti, and Shuvendu Dasgupta, eds. 1992. Film Polemics. Calcutta: Cine Club of Calcutta. Bazin, Andre. 2004. What Is Cinema? Translated by Hugh Grey, Vol. II, 16–40. Berkeley: University of California Press [1971]. Bini, Andrea. 2015. Male Anxiety and Psychopathology in Film: Comedy Italian Style. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Celli, Carlo. 2001. “The Legacy of Mario Camerini in Vittorio De Sica’s ‘The Bicycle Thief’.” Cinema Journal 40, no. 4: 3–17. Di Nolfo, Ennio. 2002. “Intimations of Neorealism in Fascist Ventennio.” In Reviewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922–1943, edited by J. Reich and P. Garofalo, 83–104. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fournier Lanzoni, Remi. 2008. Comedy Italian Style: The Golden Age of Italian Film Comedies. New York: Continuum. Fullwood, Natalie. 2015. Cinema, Gender, and Everyday Space: Comedy, Italian Style. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Giacovelli, Enrico. 1990. La commedia all’italiana. Rome: Gremese. Gunsberg, Maggie. 2005. Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Mestman, Mariano. 2011. “From Italian Neorealism to New Latin American Cinema: Ruptures and Continuities During the 1960s.” In Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style, edited by S. Giovacchini and R. Sklar, 163–77. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Mukhopadhyay, Deepankar. 1995. Maverick Maestro: Mrinal Sen. New Delhi: Indus. Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 1982. Ritwik Ghatak: A  Return to the Epic. Bombay: Screen Unit. Ray, Satyajit. 1995. Our Films, Their Films. New York: Hyperion. Sen, Mrinal. 1977. Views on Cinema. Calcutta: Ishan Publication. Vitali, Valentina. 2008. Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Part 3

Encounters Through Experience Business, Travel, Politics

7 Italy and the Discovery of India The Early Phase of Italian Foreign Policy in Bengal (1849–1936) Marzia Casolari

In the beginning it was commerce Italian interest in India dates back to pre-unification times, when Italy was not yet a nation, but just a linguistic and cultural entity. Along with China, India was the most appealing destination in the vast and ‘mysterious’ ‘Orient’ that attracted travellers, merchants and missionaries from the times of Marco Polo onwards. Eager to increase their knowledge about this almost unknown part of the world, Niccolò de’ Conti (1395–1469), Ludovico de Varthema (1470–1517) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) were among prominent Italians who visited India and, in some cases, lived there for a long time, to explore its immense natural, cultural and spiritual repositories or its commercial potential (Spagnulo 2020, 15, 231–32). Before and after Italy’s unification in 1861, Italian patriots and intellectuals took an interest in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, since to them this event reflected their own struggle. The first publications on Indian politics and contemporary history date to the same period and focus on the British colonization.1 However, Italy’s political and cultural interest in India was weaker than that of the economic actors who operated in India before Italy’s independence: in fact, the first ‘Italian’ consulate general was established in 1841 under the banner of the Kingdom of Sardinia, as Italy was not yet unified. It was located in Calcutta and led by a businessman, Giovanni Casella. It was with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, almost coincident with Italian unification, that the ties between Italy and India were really boosted, disclosing the immense economic opportunities offered by this country. If Asian markets, in general, were very attractive, India had a primary importance, so much so that the literature of the period defined the Suez Canal as ‘the gateway to India’. This new maritime route gave Italy and the Mediterranean a central position in the transcontinental relations, particularly with the Indian subcontinent: now European ports could be connected by an uninterrupted navigation line with Indian ports and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-11

146  Marzia Casolari thence with Indian railway lines and the hinterland. Moreover, all communications between Europe and India necessarily passed through the Mediterranean and Italy.2 In the years immediately preceding and following the opening of the Suez Canal, a debate flourished in Italy about all possible aspects and problems that the new shipping route might involve:3 the common objective of the abundant literature that accompanied the theoretical discourses was to obtain the greatest possible benefits from the new scenario. The debate was accompanied by concrete steps, above all the enhancement of shipping companies, the expansion of navigation routes and the opening of new ones. Indian ports had an impressive attractiveness for Italian businessmen, politicians and experts of economy and commerce. Bombay and Calcutta4 were the two outposts of Italian business expansion in India. Initially, Bombay was the main hub of Italian economic activities. Although Bengal had a thriving industrial sector in the mid-18th century, it declined subsequently in the face of competition from British industrial manufactures (Ray 2011), Calcutta survived as an important metropolitan area mainly because of its status as the headquarter of the East India Company and, later on, from 1858 to 1911, as the capital of British India. Bombay had a different fate. It remained the largest cotton market in India and enjoyed a great economic growth due to the halt of cotton supplies from America during the Civil War (1861–1865). The concurrent development of an economic hinterland and the opening of the Suez Canal transformed Bombay into a major trade centre at the crossroads of international connections, while Calcutta had an increasingly peripheral position, even more so when the capital of British India was shifted to Delhi in 1911. Nevertheless, Calcutta maintained its importance as one of the most vibrant political and cultural centres, due also to the presence of one of the most prestigious universities in India. Italians who ‘explored’ India between the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, therefore, acknowledged the importance of both the cities: Calcutta for its political and cultural relevance and Bombay for its economic importance. In 1865, Luigi Torelli, the agriculture minister, in his book Cenni intorno al commercio dell’Egitto, del Mar Rosso, delle Indie, della Cina, e del Giappone (An Overview on the commerce of Egypt, Red Sea, Indies, China and Japan) pointed at Italy’s scarce presence in India and urged the government to open diplomatic offices in large numbers, in order to provide more information on the Indian economic context to Italian investors and to support the activities of shipping companies. In 1862, the Italian government passed a law that reorganized the merchant navy by allocating funds to increase the existing shipping services and

Italy and the Discovery of India 147 open new ones. Between 1893 and 1894, the Italian government signed an agreement with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, better known as P&O, for a weekly postal service between the Italian ports of Venice and Brindisi and India and introduced a monthly shipping service operated by the Società di Navigazione Generale Italiana (Italian General Navigation Society) and Lloyd Adriatico, connecting the main Italian ports to India. The target of these activities was Bombay.5 In 1894, the Indian office of the Consorzio Industriale Italiano per il Commercio con l’Estremo Oriente (Italian Industrial Consortium for Far East Trade) was opened in Bombay. It was sponsored by some important Italian companies, above all, by Pirelli. Thereafter, steps were taken to open a branch of the Consortium in Calcutta.6 The first landing point of Italian economic interests in India was, of course, Bombay. This is understandable, considering that after the opening of the Suez Canal, the western coast of the Indian Ocean became a sort of extension of the Mediterranean and of the Italian maritime interests at large. These interests gradually began to include geopolitical goals. This shift of perspective emerged after World War I. From Bombay to Calcutta: the evolution of the Italian policy in India If Bombay was the ‘gateway to India’, Calcutta was the gateway to the Far East. The city not only was the entry point to vast Asian markets but also had a political and cultural significance as well which, however, in Italian eyes only emerged at a later date. Above all, Italian foreign policy changed significantly since the early 20th century, in particular during the time of World War I. Until the end of the 19th century, Italy accepted British predominance in Asia, and it was very careful in avoiding a clash with British interests in this region. Moreover, India as the core of the British Empire was a sensitive territory, where it was rather difficult to entertain direct relationships with the local political and economic milieu. Foreign countries could have their diplomatic missions, but it was expected that their contacts with the local economic circles would be filtered by British authorities. The main advocate of Italian economic expansion in India during this period was Emanuele Tabasso Volterra, the owner of a company based in Milan that represented the Società Nazionale di Navigazione (National Navigation Society) in Calcutta since 1912. Together with other writings on Italian international commerce, Tabasso Volterra published the booklet L’India e la penetrazione economica italiana (India and the Italian Economic Penetration) in 1915, with the sponsorship of the ‘Studies and Propaganda’ section of the Istituto Coloniale Italiano (Italian Colonial Institute)

148  Marzia Casolari in which he provided details and figures about the amount of Italian trade in India and suggestions on how to increase the Italian economic presence in that country. This was to be accomplished, for instance, by establishing permanent scholarships for commerce students in Bombay and Calcutta and temporary ones in Karachi, Delhi, Madras, Rangoon and possibly elsewhere. This Italian businessman was also a strong advocate of Italy’s direct export to India, bypassing British brokers – a particularly sensitive task, that the Italian government and businessmen could only partially fulfil. The issue of direct contacts between foreign investors and Indian companies remained a critical point in Italian economic activities in India until India’s independence. What is important to underline here is that, perhaps also thanks to Tabasso Volterra’s enterprising presence in Calcutta, the city acquired a new centrality in Italian interests and, secondly, that the idea of increasing scholarly knowledge on India and sending Italian students to that country was gaining ground, although for the time being economic and commercial matters prevailed over cultural interests. In course of World War I, and especially during the period between its end and the rise of the fascist regime in Italy, Italy’s ambitions changed. The Versailles Treaty, which did not assign to Italy those territories in the Balkans and in Africa that the London Pact had promised in 1915, provoked an uproar and stirred up feelings of revanchism. In these years, Italy started to cultivate colonial ambitions beyond its traditional areas of expansion, which up to that moment had been mainly North and East Africa and the Middle East. The relationship with Great Britain changed too, turning from subordination to competition. Although scholarly research on this phase of Italian diplomatic presence in India is limited, the available documentation and the existing studies point to a marked change in the attitude of the Italian consulate in Calcutta, which had maintained a low profile and a benevolent approach to Great Britain for a long time. After World War I, the consulate was enhanced with the appointment of Gino Cecchi, a very active diplomat who carefully observed the Indian political situation and sent regular reports to Rome.7 In 1921, this proactive diplomat proposed to the Italian government to open an Italian Chamber of Commerce in India.8 The project never took off the ground, although it was sponsored by the Lega Italiana per la tutela degli interessi nazionali all’estero (Italian League for the Protection of National Interests Abroad), by prominent Italian industrialists and representatives of important companies, including Alberto Pirelli, the owner of the famous tyre factory, the Marelli Society, the Società Marittima Italiana (Italian Maritime Society), the most important shipping company of the time, Lloyd Triestino, and the Società Veneziana di Navigazione a Vapore (Venetian Society of Steam Navigation). The reason for the proposal being

Italy and the Discovery of India 149 cancelled was that an Italian Chamber of Commerce would have necessarily been subordinated to and controlled by the British Chambers of Commerce, and this was precisely what its promoters did not want.9 In spite of the hurdles to Italian economic activities in India, the main Italian automobile, engine and machinery factories participated to the Calcutta Exhibition in 1921. Organized to celebrate the Prince of Wales, it was inaugurated on 19 December in the presence of the governor of Bengal. Italy was represented by Ansaldo, Bianchi, Diatto, Isotta Fraschini, Itala, Lancia, Romeo, Pirelli, Scat and the Società Automobilistica Nicola Romeo, which subsequently became Fiat: it had an exclusive liaison office in India named the Italian Engineering Co.10 The change of attitude of Italian diplomacy in India thus gradually began to bear fruit. Such change was simultaneous and coherent with the ongoing changes in Italian politics, which was becoming increasingly radicalized. The forces of fascism were growing stronger and would soon rise to power. Fascism and India In 1921, Benito Mussolini, who was a journalist before becoming a politician and, subsequently, the duce, Italy’s dictator, wrote an article on India, “Verso il suolo Asiatico, Malabar” (Towards the Asian Soil: Malabar. De Felice 1987, 1309–12; Prayer 1988, 56).11 While it focused on the Moplah riots, it touched on several other issues. According to Mussolini, Britain was facing a difficult time in India and its domination was doomed to end, although not immediately because Britain would attempt to retain its grip by any means, however violent and devious. India’s independence was unavoidable, he went on, it was just a question of time as its people ‘had woken up’ and ‘stood up’ against their oppressors. In particular, Mussolini was looking at the Muslims since, he predicted, Arabs and Muslims would be in turmoil from Morocco to Malabar, a ‘tremendous awakening of tribes and people’ who were resorting to arms, ready to fight a war. The result of this movement of three million men would be the ‘sunset of European hegemony, a shift of interests’ and, above all, the ‘exploitation of immense resources’, which would return to Muslim hands. Asia, ‘mysterious and powerful’, would ‘give its name to our century’. These words portray Italy’s growing colonial aspirations. The rise of the fascist regime in October 1922 represents a watershed in Italian international policy, which not only turned away from friendship with Great Britain but also moved forward in a potentially conflicting direction (Quartararo 1980, 205). The sympathy of the fascist regime for the Muslim world was motivated by Italian colonial aims in the Middle East and North Africa. Fascism was

150  Marzia Casolari essentially based on racism, therefore the sympathy for Arabs and Muslims was motivated mainly by Italy’s need to be accepted as a new actor by the people of those regions. Unlike the major European colonial powers, Italy did not have enough military strength to conquer all areas it wanted to grab, therefore it was compelled to use its soft power. It presented itself as a benevolent nation, ready to support the nationalist cause in Africa and Asia, and to replace Britain and France as a friendly and cooperative partner. However, in reality, like Britain and France, Italy was interested in exploiting the ‘immense resources’ that Mussolini had well in mind and the equally large markets for its exports. As Italy was unable to challenge Britain at the military level, it could only act at the political level by leveraging nationalist feelings and stirring up unrest in the Middle East, North Africa and India as well, in order to politically challenge Britain’s (and France’s) hegemony in those areas. Although located far from the traditional areas of Italy’s expansion in the Middle East and Africa, India was, in position and importance, complementary to them. Moreover, as the core of the British Empire, it was the ideal place for fascist anti-British policy. The reorganization of the Italian consulate in Calcutta and the effective economic policy it carried out should be seen in the context of an increasingly anti-British stance taken by the Italian fascist regime in India and elsewhere. It is important to keep in mind that however erratic and inconsistent Italian foreign policy in India may appear to us today, at that time many exponents of the Italian establishment and indigenous political circles believed in the fascist political project (De Felice 1987). From commercial to cultural: the new trend of fascist policy in India If the objective to create an Italian Chamber of Commerce in India was never achieved, in 1923, an Indo-Italian Commercial Syndicate was founded with the purpose of promoting and financing trade and economic relations between Italy and India. However, India being a British colony, it was almost impossible to entertain bilateral relations with it without facing the consistent presence and interference of British authorities. It is worth noting that two prominent revolutionaries collaborated with the foundation of the Syndicate: they were Maulvi Barkatullah and Mohammad Iqbal Shedai. The latter maintained a long-lasting relationship with Italy, beyond the fall of the fascist regime and till the end of World War II (De Felice 1987, 1312–13).12 For some more years, Italian activities in India hinged on the shipping companies. On 31 December 1923, the Italian government carried out an overall reform of the shipping companies that up to that moment had been

Italy and the Discovery of India 151 run by the state, by privatising their management.13 In the months preceding the reforms, the Italian consulate in Bombay proposed that Italian shipping companies should open a service of coastal trade in collaboration with Indian shipowners and navigation companies that had suffered losses because of the rivalry with the British companies. The subsequent negotiations also involved the Italian consulate and companies in Calcutta, but ultimately, the project was abandoned following the government directive of not entering into competition with British companies.14 At this early stage, not even Mussolini was keen to come into conflict with Great Britain. Finally in 1924, after long and complex negotiations, it was decided to found the Indo-Italian Agency Ltd., controlled by the British shipping company Lionel Edwards and by all the important Italian companies in Calcutta. Meanwhile, Calcutta and its port had become the centre of huge international economic interests and the focus of a tremendous competition among European navigation companies eager to acquire control of the commercial routes in this crucial area.15 Italian investors also had to face competition from Germany, but the worst obstacle remained the British economic and political hegemony. In 1924, India and the Far East stood at the fourth position in the whole commercial traffic from the Italian harbour of Trieste. Since it was impossible to dodge the British control over Italian economic affairs, Italian representatives in India had to enact a strategy to implant their presence in the Indian economic terrain as deeply as possible. Scholarships continued to be issued16 in order to build up a generation of trained commercial agents ready to be dispersed all over India and thus ensure the continuation of the Italian economic presence. In 1922, the Italian Consul Gino Cecchi agreed to create the position of commercial attaché to Bombay or Calcutta:17 Gino Scarpa, a young diplomatic officer was appointed in April that year.18 It was also decided to send a commercial attaché to the consulate of Bombay and Calcutta. In 1925, the rank of the consulates in Bombay and Calcutta was upgraded to consulate general, while the consular agencies of Madras and Karachi were upgraded to vice-consulates.19 In the second half of the 1920s, the policy of the fascist regime towards India began to change and to focus on sectors other than the economic one. The importance of India was such that Mussolini personally got involved once more in Indian matters: in 1926, he sent to India a senator, Count Enrico San Martino Valperga as his envoy. Mussolini instructed the Count to verify on the ground the possibility of redirecting Italian activities in India towards the cultural field.20 At the end of his mission, Senator San Martino submitted to the Italian government a lengthy report21 where, among other

152  Marzia Casolari issues, he gave three key instructions: first, starting from the assumption that culture was the ideal field to promote the image of Italy, it was necessary to establish contacts with Indian universities in order to enhance a cultural encounter that would have the effect of impressing Indian public opinion. Secondly, exchange of students should be implemented and scholarships for Indian students should be issued in order to attract and welcome these youths and inculcate within them a sympathy for Italy. Finally, Count San Martino praised Gino Scarpa as a smart, knowledgeable and well-connected officer who could be an ideal diplomat and suggested to appoint him as consul in Bombay or Madras.22 The approach of the fascist regime to India was changing, while Italian policy was becoming ever more anti-British. Considering the difficulty of carrying out autonomous economic activities and as a consequence of the increasing tensions between Italy and Great Britain, the exponents of the fascist regime adopted a different strategy: establishing long-lasting bonds with Indian intellectuals and cultural circles, thus laying the ground for a deep-rooted presence. It was a cosmetic exercise, aimed at improving the image of Italy as a country that was keen to cooperate with India, rather than to oppress it, as Britain was doing. Italian politicians and representatives abroad were convinced that sooner or later British domination would end and that Italy should be ready to take advantage of Britain’s decline in India at the precise moment it happened. Mussolini became the mastermind of the Italian foreign policy in India, at least until the late 1930s when his priorities changed due to a different international situation and more impelling needs. This policy was very clear to British intelligence which in a note of 1933 referred to the monitoring of Italian activities in 1931, describing them in the following terms: It seems Mussolini, who is known to be an Imperialist dreaming of an Italian Empire of the Mediterranean, is keenly watching the Indian situation and would welcome an India free from England’s control. He sees in that eventuality the cessation of England’s controlling interests in the Mediterranean and an equal loosening of the grip over the Suez Canal, Malta, Gibraltar, etc., would lose their strategic value and importance. My informant views Gandhi’s visit (to Rome) from this high political angle, and thinks Mussolini will give Gandhi Italy’s support for Indian independence . . .. Moreover, Italian cultural policy in India was carried out as a surreptitious form of anti-British propaganda aimed to accelerate the crisis of the British rule in India. Calcutta was the epicentre of this activity. To sum up, it may be stated, for the present at any rate, that there is no doubt whatever that so far as trade in India is concerned, Mussolini and his henchmen are inclined to regard ‘England’s difficulty as Italy’s opportunity’.23

Italy and the Discovery of India 153 Calcutta as the hub of Italian activities in India: the role of Gino Scarpa Gino Scarpa was appointed consul general in Calcutta, though only a few years later in the early 1930s. He was a pivotal figure in Italian activities in India, but surprisingly we know more about him from British, rather than from Italian records. Indeed, the British authorities kept a close eye on him, since they were highly suspicious about his activities and connections. Gino Scarpa began his career in 1922 as “the head of the Italian Economic Mission accompanying Marquis of Paterno who was proceeding to Kabul in the capacity of Italian minister to the Court of Afghanistan”.24 Earlier, Scarpa had been to Russia as part of a commercial mission. On the basis of this experience, he wrote the book La Russia dei Sovieti (Russia of the Soviets), published by the already-mentioned Italian League for the protection of national interests abroad. In this book, Scarpa described in details the Soviet political, economic and industrial system (Fabiano 1985, 224). In his youth, he had been a socialist and a republican and was filed as a subversive by Italian police until 1925 (Sofri 1988, 27–30).25 Right from his arrival in Afghanistan, he was known to be a “thoroughly trustworthy man and one capable of dealing with secret negotiations of all kinds”. During his residence in this country, Scarpa was very active in networking with local political circles and with Indian revolutionaries who found shelter in Afghanistan and could better orchestrate their activities from there. On his way to Kabul, Scarpa passed through India, where he met the Afghan envoy in Delhi, “ostensibly for commercial purposes”, but the British investigators suspected him to be involved in the dealings between the Afghan government and the Soviet Union. While in India, Scarpa met Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, the “brother of the Communist revolutionary Virendra N. Chattopadhyaya”.26 These elements were enough to raise the suspicions of British intelligence. What really concerned the British investigators was that “[e]ver since his appointment as Commercial Attaché in Bombay in 1923, Gino Scarpa has been endeavouring to develop Indo-Italian commercial relations”.27 In other words, Scarpa, as commercial attaché in Bombay, was endeavouring to fulfil the objective of establishing direct economic exchanges with Indian companies and avoiding British interference in and brokerage of Italian investments. From the same intelligence source, we also come to know that Mussolini’s brother Arnaldo was in touch with “certain disaffected Indians, such as Abdul Wahid, Shuaib Qureshi, Barkatullah, Hassan Suhrawardy, and Abdur Rahim Siddiqui”, namely Indian revolutionaries, with whom he attempted to found an Indo-Italian Syndicate. “Scarpa appears to have played a prominent part in these intrigues”, since he endeavoured to

154  Marzia Casolari undermine the British position in India by establishing direct ties with the Congress party.28 In 1928, Scarpa was consul in Ceylon, from where he continued to be involved in Indian affairs. In a report from Colombo of August  1929, he pointed out that, in order to increase the Italian economic presence in India, it was necessary, above all, to attract a large number of Indian students, ‘tomorrow’s ruling class’, to Italian universities, as they could become valuable political allies and economic partners once the British hegemony had faded. Scarpa, as well as many other Italian politicians, was convinced that Britain’s dominance would decline soon and that “Rome should become once again the intellectual centre of the Mediterranean and the link between West and East”.29 Scarpa thus laid the foundation of his main activity as consul general in Calcutta by connecting Indian students with Italian universities and cultivating relations with the Indian academic and intellectual circles, with the consent and the support of the Italian government. These were the premises for the foundation of the Institute of Middle and Extreme Orient (Ismeo) in 1933 in Rome.30 The establishment of the Ismeo and beyond For his part, Gino Scarpa reaped the benefits of the activities initiated by the Italian scholars Carlo Formichi and Giuseppe Tucci. He had met the latter in Calcutta in 1925 (Prayer 1996). Since then the noted Italian indologist had regularly visited India, Tibet and Nepal on the payroll of the fascist government, officially to carry out his researches, but with the unofficial task of paving the way for Italian expansion to India.31 He was the architect of the linkages with Indian students and young nationalists. On his return to Rome from one of his missions to India in 1931, Tucci contacted the top brass of the fascist government, especially the three most representative personalities of the fascist regime: Dino Grandi, foreign minister from 1929 to 1932, ambassador to London from 1932 to 1939 and one of the most prominent figures of the fascist regime; Giovanni Gentile, the only high-level intellectual of the Italian right-wing and education minister between 1922 and 1924; and finally Mussolini, who was personally interested in Italian cultural propaganda in the Middle East and India.32 Giuseppe Tucci’s goal was the creation of an Indo-Italian Institute, which should pursue economic interests by using culture as a means to train and indoctrinate Indian youths and come into contact with Indian personalities.33 The establishment of Ismeo was made possible by a wide network built by the Italian consulate general among Bengali nationalists and intellectuals. Among them, the two most prominent figures were Tarak Nath Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. Of the two, Tarak Nath Das (1884–1958) had a

Italy and the Discovery of India 155 more prominent role as the architect of the politicization of Indian students in Italy and Germany, their indoctrination and exploitation as multipliers of the fascist ideology and values and as ‘agents’ of the Italian economic expansion in India (Sareen 1979; Hauner 1981, 58; Prayer 1996, 85–92; Mukherjee 1998; Framke 2016; Casolari 2020, 36–46). At that time, Bose had a less visible role, since his close collaboration with the fascist and Nazi regimes started during World War II. On the occasion of his journeys in Europe, Tarak Nath Das went also to Italy, where he collaborated in the establishment of Ismeo, which formally took place in December 1932. However, the Institute was inaugurated concomitantly with the first Congress of Oriental Students, held in Rome between 21 and 28 December 1933. Mussolini delivered the inaugural speech. The chair of the institute was Giovanni Gentile, and Giuseppe Tucci was the director. Sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs, Ismeo had an evident political character. It was Tarak Nath Das’s idea to organize the Congress of the Oriental Students. In fact, thanks to his extensive connections, he was the right person to carry out this task.34 After the Congress, the Confederation of Oriental Students was founded in Rome. On 22 December, the third meeting of the Confederation of Indian Students Abroad also took place with Subhas Chandra Bose chairing the gathering. This was Bose’s first journey to Rome, where he planned to meet Mussolini and other Italian politicians.35 Besides helping in organizing the Conference, Bose also cooperated with Tucci to lay the basis of a ‘permanent office’ of Indians living in Italy which later on became the Hindustan Association in Rome.36 The 18th Congress of the Orientalists, held in Rome from 23 to 29 September  1935, was the last important international gathering to be held in Italy under fascism.37 After the Ethiopian campaign, large-scale international events came to a halt. The first Congress of Oriental Students living in Italy took place in Bologna in May 1936, right in the middle of the conquest of Addis Ababa, but it was not as magnificent as the previous Congresses of Oriental Students living in Europe, held in 1933 and 1934.38 If Tarak Nath Das was more of a ‘man in the shadows’ since he was not well-known within Italian political circles, Subhas Chandra Bose was much more prominent, a popular leader in India with a certain fame in Italy. Above all, Bose was appreciated by Mussolini, who looked to him as a reference for Italy’s foreign policy in India. Mussolini held Bose in such a high esteem that he did not abandon him even during the harsh times of the Salò Republic (September 1943 to April 1945). Bose’s importance for the fascist regime exceeded that of any other Indian personality. However, since his activities in Europe in the 1930s and during World War II are well-known, there is no need to enter these details here (Mukherjee 1966; Patil 1988; Chakravarty 1990; Gordon 1990; Sareen 1988, 1991). The

156  Marzia Casolari argument in the next section will rather focus on Bose’s role in assisting Italian anti-British propaganda which increased with the approaching of the Ethiopian War. We must bear in mind that the war in East Africa was not a sudden accident, but the result of a long process that dated back to 1932, when Mussolini and the Italian chiefs of staff began to cultivate the idea to conquer Ethiopia. From this perspective, the strong anti-British meaning of the cooptation work among Indian students in Italy and the Italian propaganda in India becomes apparent. Even in terms of time, Italian propaganda in India was enhanced and perfected concurrently with the activities in Rome. Italy’s ‘Indian’ policy during the Ethiopian War Gino Scarpa left India at the end of 1933. After the temporary appointment of Guido Navarrini, the new consul general at Calcutta, Guido Sollazzo carried out an intense propaganda activity, along with Guido Benasaglio, holder of a scholarship from the fascist government and appointed as teacher of Italian at the University of Calcutta. When Benasaglio took up office in the summer of 1935, he had already been living in India for sixteen years, as a manager and consultant for several companies, serving also as honorary vice-consul of Italy.39 The British authorities perceived Benasaglio as “the agent through whom the Consul-General is carrying on his political propaganda (and there is plenty of secret information on this point which is substantiated by our watch reports)”.40 Towards the outbreak of the Ethiopian War, the Italian policy in India became aggressively anti-British, since it reflected the tensions between Italy and Great Britain regarding East Africa. Between Sollazzo and Benasaglio, there was an instant understanding. They orchestrated a massive propaganda activity involving the main publishers in Calcutta and practically all journals and newspapers. Little information is available about Benasaglio, who was the mastermind of the anti-British campaign launched between 1935 and 1936. He may have acted behind the scene during his long residence in Calcutta, weaving relations with the Bengali nationalist circles and the local press. The Abyssinian crisis offered him the opportunity to capitalize on his acquaintances. Besides obtaining favourable articles in Forward, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Modern Review, and Bishan, he and the consul general personally wrote a number of unsigned leaflets that were printed by the Saraswati Press, the Indian Daily News Press, the Mukharji Press and the Uttara Press in Calcutta. Officially, the publications were sponsored by the Italian Community in India, a mysterious organization whose mailbox was in Benasaglio’s name. It was nothing else but the consulate general and had only two members – Sollazzo and Benasaglio.41

Italy and the Discovery of India 157 Although Bose remained in Europe from late 1932 to February 1936,42 at the peak of the Abyssinian crisis when Italy’s image was undermined, he played a fundamental role in advocating the Italian position among Indian students in Italy and Europe and exerted his influence on the main Bengali magazines and newspapers to overturn criticism raised against Italy in the local press. He himself wrote two articles, in Amrita Bazar Patrika (Procacci 1984, 52) and Modern Review, respectively. In the second article entitled The Secret of Abyssinia and Its Lesson, Bose justified with subtle arguments Italy’s point in Ethiopia.43 In spite of the secretiveness of the organizers of the Italian propaganda in Calcutta, the British authorities carefully detected them and had “reliable and corroborated information that the Italian Consul-General was definitely directing this propaganda campaign”.44 When the British undersecretary of state and the foreign secretary were informed about the Italian anti-British campaign, the latter suggested to demand Sollazzo’s removal.45 In June 1936, the India Office took the decision to remove Sollazzo and expel Benasaglio.46 While the latter’s expulsion was later repealed, Sollazzo left Calcutta on 29 September  1936.47 The next consul general was Camillo Giuriati.48 With the end of the Ethiopian War, the relations between Italy and Great Britain improved. However, the Italian propaganda continued unabated, although it lost the anti-British tones. The seeds sown by Sollazzo and Benasaglio bore their fruit: besides the already-mentioned newspapers and magazines, including The Daily Star, The Bombay Chronicle, Hyderabad Bulletin, Hindustan Standard, Advance, National Call, The Hindu and The Statesman and the press agencies Reuters and Stefani regularly published material provided by the consulate general in Calcutta and Bombay.49 During the approach of and following the outbreak of World War II, Italian ‘intrigues’ and propaganda activities continued, although their political significance partially changed into a military one. In this phase, Subhas Bose’s attempt to create an Indian National Army (INA) became relevant, albeit only partially successful, at least from the military point of view. In the second half of the 1930s and during the war, in the eyes of the fascist regime, Bose was the most prominent leader among Indian nationalists and the contact person along with other elements, in particular Arab nationalists, in the context of Italy’s plans to stir up the anti-British unrest across the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Regarding the efficacy of the Italian foreign policy in India, after the initial impulse, it proved to be inconsistent, especially when Mussolini and the Italian government were distracted by other major issues, especially on the eve of and during World War II.

158  Marzia Casolari Conclusion Considered from the point of view of actual results, Italian policy in India may appear unsuccessful, especially if we assume that it aimed at undermining, and eventually overthrowing, British hegemony in the Indian subcontinent. This, however, was not the case. Italian policy towards India pursued essentially two aims – the economic and the political. The former aim – to acquire economic space in such an important area in search of the so-called place in the sun in South Asia – was pursued since the early phases of Italian expansion in India in the mid-19th century. This was the real phase of the ‘discovery’ of India, characterized by the exploration of the territory and its potentialities in the broadest sense, not only as far as economy was concerned but also from the political and cultural point of view. At this stage, besides the initial economic enterprises, contacts were established between Italian representatives and Indian cultural circles. Italians thus discovered not only ports, commercial routes and markets but also the Indian cultural heritage and became aware of several common features between India and Italy. They were also surprised at Italy’s popularity in India: such popularity was exploited at a later stage, when the discovery was largely over. Subsequently, political ties were built and Italy consolidated its presence in India. This phase coincided with the end of World War I and was influenced by the revanchism stoked by the peace treaties. From the early 1920s to the mid-1930s and beyond, Italy cultivated relations with the Indian political environment in order to foster the local anti-British radical nationalism. Stirring up a degree of political unrest, it was hoped, would keep Britain under check and could be used to ‘blackmail’ the British government into negotiating deals on pending issues in Europe and Africa. Later, as relations between Rome and London became increasingly conflicted during and after the Ethiopian War, Italy developed a new ambition of replacing Great Britain in the Middle East. It became then essential to unsettle India as the core of the empire in order to engage the British, distract their attention and loosen their grip over Arab countries, which were crucial for Italian imperialistic goals. These two phases of Italy’s approach to India should not be considered two separate moments, but rather as two steps in the evolution of Italy’s ‘Indian’ policy. Although Italian economic interest in India was mainly concentrated on Bombay and Calcutta, these cities should not be considered mere geographic outposts. They were, in fact, the nerve centres of Italian political activities. Calcutta, in particular, became the actual headquarters of Italian policy in India. As argued earlier, culture had been the main terrain where the Indo-Italian relations were cultivated at first. Italy used culture as a soft power tool: the antiquity of its culture that, incidentally,

Italy and the Discovery of India 159 was comparable to India’s, legitimized Italy’s colonial attitude. In its name, it was thought, Italy could play a civilizing role in Asia and Africa. The Anglo-Saxon culture, on the contrary, was presented as inferior, as Britain could only subjugate other peoples by force. Calcutta was the natural location of the cultural and, subsequently, political encounter between Italy and India, as it was India’s most thriving cultural centre. A sort of intellectual harmony flourished between Italian diplomats and envoys, the cultured members of Bengal’s middle and upper classes and local political activists, who were to a large extent young people. This cultural connection proved particularly useful during the Ethiopian War, when Italy’s image in India and at the international level suffered a setback and needed rehabilitation. As far as India was concerned, an intense propaganda was organized among prominent local newspapers. Orchestrated by the Italian consulate general in Calcutta, it succeeded in convincing at least a part of Indian public opinion about the legitimacy of the Italian position over the Ethiopian issue. Moreover, this propaganda campaign was successful in preserving the support of Indian radical nationalist circles, whose sympathy for Italy continued unabated. This solidarity was due to personal ties built up throughout the years by Italian representatives in Calcutta, as well as to the favourable political and cultural ground meticulously prepared by the Italian authorities. In addition, the belief in the existence of historical affinities between Italy and India played a fundamental role in overturning the perception of Italian colonial attitudes, which were generally seen as more benign than the British and the French ones. However, the Ethiopian campaign did represent a watershed in Italy’s ‘Indian’ policy, which had been consistent throughout the first three decades of the 20th century. From the second half of the 1930s onwards, it became more erratic and distracted, especially due to the fact that the Italian government, Mussolini and Italian politicians were increasingly involved with other pressing concerns. These included the consolidation of nazism in Germany, the ensuing radicalization of Italian domestic and foreign policy, the deterioration of relations with Great Britain and the worsening of the international situation, which ultimately led to the outbreak of World War II. Nevertheless, in spite of the fascist regime’s crimes and the colonial ambitions that also underpinned the Italian policy in India, Italy could capitalize upon the positive experiences of pre-war years. After the end of World War II as India and Pakistan attained independence, Italy met with little resistance among local political circles in its attempt to resume the old contacts. It was still perceived as a minor and more benign power, if compared with the major ones (Spagnulo 2020).

160  Marzia Casolari Notes 1 Giambattista Crollalanza, L’Impero Indo-Britannico e la sua potenza militare (1857); Giuseppe Lazzaro, Della Compagnia e della dominazione inglese nelle Indie fino alla caduta di Delhi nel 1858 (1858). 2 Cesare Correnti, “Sull’Istmo di Suez e sul Commercio Orientale.” Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana (February 1869), 489–98. Cesare Correnti was among the founders of the Italian Geographic Society and its president from 1873 to 1878. He was also minister of education in 1867, 1869 and 1872. 3 Several major studies on the opening of the Suez Canal and the opportunities it could offer were published at that time. Almost all these works emphasized the primary importance of increasing commercial ties with India: P. L. Barzellotti, La questione commerciale d’Oriente, l’Italia e il canale di Suez (1869); G. Boccardo and L. Patrone, Il canale attraverso l’istmo di Suez e gli interessi commerciali dell’Italia (1865); G. Boccardo, Il bosforo di Suez in relazione col commercio del mondo e segnatamente col commercio dell’Italia (1868); F. Lampertico, “L’istmo di Suez.” Nuova Antologia 5 (May 1867); A. Monti, Gli Italiani e il canale di Suez (1937); A. Sammarco, “La verità sulla questione del Canale di Suez,” Oriente Moderno 19 (1939); G. Sapeto, L’Italia e il Canale di Suez (1865); A. Teso, ‘Il Canale di Suez – Studi e presagi.’ Rivista marittima (1899); L. Torelli, “Il taglio dell’ istmo di Suez,” in Dell’avvenire del commercio europeo ed in modo speciale di quello degli Stati italiani (1859); Id., Cenni intorno al commercio dell’Egitto, del Mar Rosso, delle Indie, della Cina e del Giappone (1865); Id., L’istmo di Suez e l’Italia (1867); Id., L’Italia e l’Oriente – Studi di politica commerciale (1900); C. Vimercati, Il canale dell’istmo di Suez (1864). 4 I use here the denomination of Calcutta and Bombay, instead of the present Kolkata and Mumbai, since it was the current denomination in the period under review. 5 See Arturo Codignola, Rubattino (1938); Manfredo Camperio, Agenzie del Consorzio Industriale Italiano per il Commercio coll’Estremo Oriente (1898). 6 Archivio Storico Ministero Affari Esteri (Historical Archives of the Ministry of External Affairs, ASMAE), Affari Commerciali 1919–23, Gran Bretagna, b. 79, Verbale della seduta del 13 dicembre della sezione milanese della Lega Italiana per la tutela degli interessi nazionali all’estero, 21 December 1921, enclosed to the letter no. 10258, from Presidenza Generale della Lega al Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 24 December 1921. 7 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali 1919–23, Gran Bretagna, b. 77. 8 Ibid., b. 79. 9 Ibid., b. 84, report no. 1348/83, from Italian consulate general to the Ministry of External Affairs, Calcutta, 24 December 1921, signed Cecchi. 10 Ibid. 11 The article was published in a newspaper founded by Mussolini, Il Popolo d’Italia, on 4 September 1921. 12 A detailed biographical note on the two revolutionaries is in National Archives of India (NAI), Home Political Department, 70/1924, “Mohamed Barkatullah”, 22 December  1923, attached to a report dated 29 December  1923 from the Public and Judicial Department (P&J) to the under secretary of state, Foreign Office; ASMAE, Gab. 408, biographical note, undated, marked “April 41?”. 13 Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central State Archives, ACS), Ministero della Marina Mercantile, Direzione Generale del Personale e Affari Generali, Atti Amministrativi, b. 21, note to the Ministry of Public Works dated 26 January [1924].

Italy and the Discovery of India 161 14 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali 1919–23, Gran Bretagna, b. 78, from consulate of Italy, Bombay, 27 July 1923 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 15 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali 1924–26, Gran Bretagna, pos. 11, file “S.A. Tabasso Volterra Agenzia Commerciale in Calcutta” report no. 690 from Italian consulate, Calcutta to the Ministry of Communications, 18 June 1924. 16 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali 1919–23, Gran Bretagna, b.79, no. 134, to the General Presidency of the Italian League, Rome. 17 Ibid. 18 ACS, Min. Interno, Direz. Gen. P.S., Div. Affari Gen. e Ris., 1939, A1 f. “Scarpa Guido” (sic); letter from Italian Embassy, London to Balfour 15 July  1923; NAI, Commercial Department, 1017 G(I), 1923, from Italian Embassy, London to Lord Curzon, 24 May 1922: “Dr. Gino Scarpa has been appointed Commercial Attaché to the Italian Consulate at Bombay and . . . has arrived at his post”. 19 NAI, Foreign and Political Dept, 688 G 1925 and Commerce Department, 38-G/28. 20 ASMAE, Archivio Scuole, 1923–28, b. 667, f. 5, report no. 223/10, from the Italian consul in Calcutta to the Ministry of External Affairs, 29 January 1926. 21 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali 1924–26, Gran Bretagna, pos. 27, 19 June 1926. 22 Ibid. 23 India Office Records (IOR), L/P&S/12/81, Note of the British Intelligence, 31 July 1933 (Dr. Gino Scarpa and the “Italian Connection”). 24 Note of the British intelligence of 15 June  1931 enclosed to a communiqué dated 6 August 1933, Foreign and Political Dept. to Walton, Secretary Political Dept. India Office: IOR, L/P&S/12/81. A copy of this record is also in NAI, Foreign and Political Department, 241, G (secret), 1931. Further information on Scarpa is in IOR, L/P&S/10/987, telegram no. 4348, 7 June 1922, from His Britannic Majesty’s Minister Kabul to secretary of state for Foreign Affairs. 25 ACS, Min. Interno, Direz. Gen. P.S., Div. Affari Gen. e Ris., 1939, A1 f. “Scarpa Guido” and Div. Polizia Politica, f. “Scarpa Luigi detto Gino”, quoted by De Felice 1987, 1315. 26 IOR, L/P&S/12/81, note of the British Intelligence, attached to a communiqué dated 6 August 1933 from Foreign and Political Dept. to Walton, secretary at the Political Department. 27 ASMAE, Affari Commerciali, Gran Bretagna, b. 75, telegram no. 241522, 28 September 1923 from Ministry of External Affair to the Royal Embassy and telegram no. 2330/918. 28 IOR, L/P&S/12/81 and NAI, Foreign and Political Department, 241, note of 15 June 1931. 29 ASMAE, AP, Gran Bretagna, 1929, b. 1207, report no. 186, 13 August 1929, from consulate of Italy, Colombo to the Ministry of External Affairs. 30 ASMAE, Archivio di Gabinetto, UCS, b. 5, communiqué from undersecretary of state to All Ministers, Rome, 19 April 1928. 31 ASMAE, Archivio Scuole, 1923–28, b. 667, f. 5, which provides evidence of the payments from the Italian government to Giuseppe Tucci for his services; Archivio Scuole, 1929–35, b. 858. 32 ASMAE, RG, b. 7, f. 13 Report dated March 1931 from Tucci to Mussolini, Grandi and Gentile. A copy of the same report is also in Fondazione Gentile, Enti, b. 3, Ismeo. 33 Ibid., undated and unsigned report, probably dating to early 1931 and presumably written by Scarpa.

162  Marzia Casolari 34 Fondazione Gentile, Corrispondenza da terzi a terzi, undated letter, most probably from 1933, from Tark Nath Das to Pramatha Nath Roy. 35 NAI, Subhas Chandra Bose papers, Letters from S.C. Bose to Divekar. The latter was a Marathi acquaintance of Bose’s, who sent him money and met his immediate requirements in Europe. 36 ASMAE, Gab. pos. 7, Udienze, Subhas Chandra Bose. On Bose’s contribution to the organisation of the Congress, see the note “Per Sua Eccellenza il Capo del Governo” 23 January 1935 and IO, L/P&S/12/107, letter from the British Ambassador in Rome to Sir John Simon, 2 February 1934. 37 ASMAE, RG, 1934, b. 32; ACS PCM, 1934–36, 2015; NAI, Commerce Department, 10C 23 (II), 1935. 38 ASMAE, RG, 1936, b. 52, Ismeo; IOR, L/P&S/12/107; Archivio Storico Istituto di Zoologia Bologna (the Rector Alessandro Ghigi was a zoologist as well as a senator); Archivio Storico Università di Bologna. 39 NAI, Foreign and Political Department 280 N 1936, letter from the owner of the company Sawday, where Benasaglio had been working, to Metcalfe, dated 9 August  1936 and note of the Foreign and Political Department, 17 August 1936. 40 Ibid., note of 17 August 1936. 41 NAI, 612 N 1935, note of the British Intelligence “Statement of C.112 dated the 6th November ‘35”; NAI, Foreign and Political Department, 280 N 1936 and IOR, L/P&S/12/1536, “Note on the connection of the Italian Consul General in Calcutta with pro-Italian and anti-British propaganda”, 7 February  1936 signed M.K. Johnston, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Branch, Calcutta. A summary of this note was included in a letter from G. F. Hogg, chief secretary to the Government of Bengal to the foreign secretary to the Government of India, 26 February 1936. 42 ASMAE, Gab. pos. 7, cit., unsigned note to Mussolini, dated 15 February 1936 (see De Felice 1987, 1326). 43 Ibid., dated 15 October 1935, but published in November. 44 NAI, Foreign and Political Department, 179 X 1936 and 280 N 1936, Extract from the Statement of C-112 dated 2 March 1936. 45 NAI, 280 N 1936, from the foreign secretary to the Government of India to the under secretary of state for India, 19 March 1936. 46 Ibid., letter from the India Office to the undersecretary of state for External Affairs, 9 June 1936. 47 Ibid., telegram dated 3 October 1936 from Bengal Darjeeling to Foreign Simla and an identical telegram, with the same date, from viceroy, Simla to Secy of State for India, London. 48 Ibid, communiqué from Benasaglio to chief secretary to the Government of Bengal, 19 September 1936. 49 NAI, Home Political Department, 137/38, 1938 and 79/38.

References Casolari, Marzia. 2020. In the Shadow of the Swastika. The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism. London and New York: Routledge. Chakravarty, Bidyut. 1990. Subhas Chadra Bose and Middle Class Radicalism, 1928–1940. London: I.B. Tauris and Co.

Italy and the Discovery of India 163 De Felice, Renzo. 1987. “L’India nella strategia politica di Mussolini.” Storia Contemporanea 18, no. 6: 1309–63. Fabiano, Domenico. 1985. “La Lega Italiana per la tutela degli interessi nazionali all’estero e le origini dei fasci italiani all’estero, 1920–1923.” Storia Contemporanea 16, no. 2: 203–50. Framke, Maria. 2016. “Shopping Ideologies for Independent India? Taraknath Das’s Engagement with Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.” Itinerario 40, no. 1: 55–81. Gordon, Leonard A. 1990. Brothers Against the Raj. A Biography of Sarat & Subhas Chandra Bose. New York: Columbia University Press. Hauner, Milan. 1981. India in Axis Strategy. Germany, Japan and the Indian Nationalists in the Second World War. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Mukherjee, Tapan K. 1998. Taraknath Das: Life and Letters of a Revolutionary in Exile. Calcutta: National Council of Education. Mukherjee, Uma. 1966. Two Great Indian Revolutionaries. Rash Behari Bose and Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee. Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay. Patil, V. S. 1988. Subhas Chandra Bose: His Contribution to Indian Nationalism. New Delhi: Sterling. Prayer, Mario. 1988. “Gandhi e il nazionalismo indiano nella pubblicistica del regime fascista.” Storia Contemporanea 19, no. 1: 55–83. ———. 1996. Internazionalismo e nazionalismo culturale. Gli intellettuali bengalesi e l’Italia negli anni Venti e Trenta. Roma: Bardi. Procacci, Giuliano. 1984. Dalla parte dell’Etiopia. L’aggressione italiana vista dai movimenti anticolonialisti d’Asia, d’Africa, d’America. Milano: Feltrinelli. Quartararo, Rosaria. 1980. Roma tra Londra e Berlino. La politica estera fascista dal 1930 al 1940. Roma: Bonacci. Ray, Indrajit. 2011. Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution (1757– 1857). London and New York: Routledge. Sareen, Tilak Raj. 1979. Indian Revolutionary Movement Abroad (1905–1920). New Delhi: Sterling. ———. 1988. Select Documents on India National Army. New Delhi: Agam Prakashan. ———. 1991. Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany. New Delhi: Criterion Publications. Sofri, Gianni. 1988. Gandhi in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino. Spagnulo, Giuseppe. 2020. Il Risorgimento dell’Asia. India e Pakistan nella politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1980). Firenze: Le Monnier.

8 “The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . . only deals in trade” Italian Traders in Bengal 1850–1950 ca. Antonella Viola Italian commercial expansion in India In 1881, a report about Italian emigration in Asia stated that the great majority of Italians residing in Calcutta, and in India as a whole, had moved there to pursue economic and trading activities of some sort: “The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . . and whose number grows year by year, only deals in trade, the only occupation that can give him the chance to live comfortably, as indispensable for foreigners that want to get by in this country”.1 Like most of the private and public documentation on the same topic, the aforementioned document remarked that the small Italian community in the city was trade-oriented. The great majority of its members were, in fact, engaged in some sort of business activities that they successfully carried out despite the multiple difficulties that affected nonBritish-sponsored trade. India had been a favourite destination for Italian merchants since the Early Modern period. However, the presence of Italian traders in British India was somewhat different and their experiences differed significantly from those of the Italian merchant-travellers who handled large swathes of the trade in spices and luxury goods under the protective umbrella of the Portuguese overseas expansion. During the 19th and 20th centuries, what attracted Italians to the Indian subcontinent was the need to find new opportunities in a colonial market that was perceived as very appealing and potentially profitable. Italian economic operators considered India a commercial frontier: a place that offered new business opportunities for strengthening the activities they were already carrying out in Italy. After the first industrial take-off, the need to find new target markets for the commercialization of Italian products became urgent, and many turned their eyes to South Asia (Viola 2006). Most Italians residing in British India were traders who operated familyrun, small- or medium-size firms. The Indian-based firms were usually DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-12

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 165 the branch-offices of Italian trading-houses. The company located in Italy fulfilled the role of mother-company, while the office in India acted as a branch. Overseas branches were usually entrusted to male relatives, who settled in India in the period during which they were managing the branch itself. The majority of Italian traders never settled in India permanently and returned home at the age of retirement, or even earlier, handing their business over to younger members of the family or relatives-in-law. The links with Italy were always overwhelmingly strong. The core of the economic activities that Italian traders ran was usually located in Italy, and business in India was mostly meant to complement those activities. As such, large shares of the profits made in India were usually reinvested in their homeland. Family and personal relationships played a key role in the making of the Italian trading activities in India. The role of the family in structuring and supporting economic enterprise has been a remarkable aspect of Italian business culture over the centuries (Colli 2003), and Italian traders in India were an enlightening example of how this was turned into a powerful tool to operate overseas. In South Asia, Italians faced several difficulties as they came to work in a colonial market in which British economic operators usually had the upper hand and other European traders were heavily supported by their mother-countries. Given that they were not part of the British Empire and lacked any significant support by the Italian state, Italians were very often forced to turn to traditional business practices based on personal and family ties, which were a valuable shield against the volatility and unpredictability of a foreign market. Entrepreneurial strategies grounded on an extensive network of personal and family relationships were also very important to respond to the lack of any favourable national policies or ad hoc measures to buttress Italian trading and economic activities in Asia. The lack of specifically designed economic policies meant to support small- and medium-size firms and the state’s disregard for trade with Asia seriously hampered the entrepreneurial dynamism of Italian traders in India and often hindered enterprise start-up and exit (Sabbatini 1911). From 1861 to World War I, the attitude of the Italian government towards overseas trade and commerce was, generally speaking, not encouraging. Trade-related issues were never approached by political elites in a systematic way; the incapacity and unwillingness to fittingly support commercial activities overseas were fraught with negative consequences. The unconducive attitude of the Italian government, combined with the flaws of the Italian merchant marine (De Courten 1989), became ominously concerning at the turn of the 19th century. The absence of state support was generally perceived by Italian economic operators as a major setback that dramatically reduced their chances to successfully compete in Asian markets.2 The lack of financial institutions purposely designed to support

166  Antonella Viola overseas trade was regarded as a further roadblock for the Italian commercial expansion in Asia. The need for colonial credit institutions in India was felt by Italian traders as particularly urgent, as they were often forced to deal with Anglo-Indian or French banks, which used to apply a discriminatory policy to non-national customers that greatly penalized transactions in currencies other than pounds sterling and francs. In some cases, Italian traders responded to the issue of raising capital in India by relying, whenever convenient, upon Indian native bankers and financiers (Viola 2008) or clung to forms of self-financing, collecting money in their place of origin, within the family or in their circle of friends and business partners, or turned to local financial resources when capital for short-term investments was required. In such a difficult environment, a family-based business organization seemed to offer a good degree of protection from the dysfunctions of a disappointing political and economic system and the threats and volatility of colonial markets. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, as the great majority of Italian traders in India were family-run firms, the tendency to capitalize on resources embedded in the family was widespread among them. A family-run business was a highly articulated form of managing trading activities which displayed remarkable flexibility and noteworthy capacities of quickly responding to market changes. Italian economic operators actually tended to associate members of the family with the allocation of resources, power and responsibility. This undoubtedly offered an array of practical advantages: first of all, the reduction of internal transaction and agency costs; secondly, it gave them the suppleness necessary to operate in the Indian economic environment; thirdly, it helped convey information more rapidly. Last but not least, the family structure of most Italian firms made them somehow similar to the trading families of Indian merchants, and it was, therefore, fundamental in providing a common ground between Italians and Indians. When Italians approached mercantile groups in India, they immediately understood that the success of the networks they wished to establish resided in the capacity of understanding the multiple levels of interaction inside and outside merchant families. There were, of course, some initial difficulties, but once linkages with native merchants were established, Italians managed to grasp the mechanisms underlying intra-and inter-family relationships in the different merchant communities relatively quickly and exploited them to their advantage. For Italian traders working in India, who were neither benefitting from the legal and economic facilities of the colonizers nor enjoying the countless practical advantages of the native mercantile communities, a model of business organization based on family ties and kinship proved to be sufficiently pliable and adaptive to fit in an alien economic environment. A family-based business organization was usually combined with a thick

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 167 net of personal relationships. In a time when business was still mostly dependent upon reputation and personal connections, an extensive net of personal relationships could turn out to be very useful, not to say crucial for the success of a business enterprise in a new and highly competitive market. Italian traders in Bengal: caterers and silk traders By the end of the 19th century, Calcutta along with Bombay hosted the largest Italian trading community in India (Viola 2008). Most Italian firms found it convenient to establish their business in Calcutta as the city offered an environment conducive to their activities, efficient services, good transports and other facilities useful to develop and boost trading activities, and a vibrant European merchant community within which Italians lived, interacted, and forged social relationships. It is beyond the scale and scope of this study to propose a systematic analysis of all Italian economic actors present in Bengal, therefore only some of them have been taken into consideration as examples of Italian expatriate entrepreneurship in India. Perhaps the most well-known Italians in Bengal and all over India were those who worked in the hospitality industry; Italian confectioners and caterers who had opened up restaurants and hotels were particularly appreciated in colonial India. Confectionery was usually associated with Italy and, over time, confectioner became synonymous with Italian. As pointed out by the Italian consul in Bombay, Giovanni Gorio, in one of his annual reports: “a typically Italian profession is that of confectioner”.3 Names like those of Federico Peliti and Angelo Firpo were so wellknown in Calcutta that they have become part of the city’s history and culture. Peliti, in particular, was extremely renowned in British India by the late 19th century. E. Bertarelli, who travelled to Calcutta in the early 20th century, described Peliti in his travel memoir as “the most popular Italian in India” (Bertarelli 1909). Since its opening in 1875 in Chowringhee, Peliti’s restaurant became a point of reference for Calcutta’s social life. Local upper classes used to dine at Peliti’s, where he served mostly French haute cuisine dishes and occasionally some Italian dishes (Viola 2012b). Peliti combined his business in the hotel industry with a passion for photography; his collection of pictures conveys to the present-day viewer a tangible sense of European life in British India, and above all, it provides visual evidence of the socio-cultural dimension of colonial life, with its recreational activities, leisures and parties. Furthermore, his photographs offer an interesting insight into how Italians residing in India interacted with each other within the colonial social fabric, and how they perceived themselves in contraposition to other European national groups on the one hand, and natives, on the other (Viola 2012a).

168  Antonella Viola Peliti’s legacy was carried on by Angelo Firpo, a Genoese apprentice of Peliti himself, who operated a hotel, a restaurant, a tea-room and a bakery, employing more than five hundred people at the zenith of his success. Firpo’s soon turned out to be the favourite spot for Calcutta’s elite in the early decades of the 20th century. The top-brass of Anglo-Greek tradinghouses, like the Rallis, used to gather there for lunch on Fridays (MarcosDodis 2002) and the Lido Room at Firpo’s Hotel was a popular hangout of Calcutta’s nightlife until the late 1960s. The Italians involved in the hotel industry and catering services closely interacted with both Europeans and Indian upper classes, who used to attend events at their hotels and restaurants. Therefore, they projected onto the colonial society, in which they lived and worked, a certain idea of being Italian especially related to high-quality food. The image of Italians they helped to forge, first in Calcutta and then in other Indian cities, took root and spread all over the country, becoming part of a recurrent colonial imagery inevitably linked to the heyday of British rule. Along with these very well-known figures, the resident Italian community included economic operators involved in a wide range of commercial activities from import-export to shopkeeping. Among them, silk traders warrant mention because of the nature of their activities and the relationships they forged within and outside Bengal, which went far beyond mere economic cooperation and touched important scientific aspects in the field of sericulture. The involvement of Italians in Bengal’s silk-producing industry was initially due to the close links between Italian and Indian sericulture from the late 18th century onwards: with the introduction of the Piedmontese silk reeling machine in the East India Company’s filatures (Davini 2004), the recruitment of Italian silk experts became a common practice. In the mid-19th century, as a consequence of the pebrine crisis in Europe,4 the presence of Italian silk traders in Bengal grew and gained special relevance (Davini 2009). The outbreak of pebrine was a true turning point which upset the international market for raw silk for more than twenty years and reshaped the world geography of silk production (Federico 1997). In order to quickly respond to the threat of this new disease, Italian sericulturists began to travel throughout Asia in search of good and healthy seed.5 Bengal, along with Kashmir and Mysore, became the favoured destination of several scientific missions, meant to discover whether it was possible to import and acclimatize Indian silkworms in Italy. The mission led by Gherardo Freschi was probably the most ambitious one for its far-reaching consequences (Zanier 1993). Freschi, a nobleman from Friuli with huge interests in the silk business and an outstanding expertise in sericulture, arrived in India in February 1859 (Zanier 1993). He had planned an expedition to Asia jointly with his friend G.B. Castellani to test the feasibility

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 169 of importing and rearing Asian seed in Italy. While travelling to Bengal, Freschi got in touch with other Italians, namely Mr Vidi and Mr Pistori, who were on mission on behalf of a group of silk entrepreneurs from Vicenza, a town in the north-eastern region of Veneto. In Calcutta, they were all helped by Giuseppe Casella,6 who might have played an important role in advising his hosts about the best silk-producing districts to visit, and the people to contact on the spot. Freschi was recommended to go to Ghottal, where he actually went in the company of Casella’s son, Francesco. Meanwhile, Vidi and Pistori reached Rajarampore, where Giuseppe De Cristoforis7 worked for the Italian-Swiss firm Jung & Co., which had purchased some of the East India Company’s filatures. Soon after his arrival in Ghottal, Freschi began to inspect all the silkworm breeding establishments in the area and was highly disappointed with the conditions of local sericulture. His consternation was made worse by the examination under the microscope of the young silkworms and the moths which showed, according to him, the unequivocal symptoms of pebrine. While in Calcutta, Freschi also examined other seed-samples he had received from other parts of Bengal and came to the conclusion that the entire region was already infected by the disease, and therefore no seed could be collected from any of the Bengali silk-producing districts. In April 1859, the results of Freschi’s mission were officially presented in one of the meetings of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India in Calcutta. As soon as Freschi’s report echoed in the Anglo-Indian press, it stirred up a hornet’s nest. The immediate reaction of the Bengal-based British entrepreneurs with interests in the silk business was violent. One of the most important British trading-companies in Asia, Jardine, Skinner & Co. (Jones 2000), whose filatures Freschi had visited in Ghottal, considered the report a personal attack. Freschi was accused of inaccuracy in his examination of the Bengali silkworm races and the quality of Bengali raw silk (Zanier 1993). Moreover, the claim made by Freschi about the widespread presence of pebrine in Bengal was rejected as no sufficient evidence was provided. The detection of pebrine by Freschi is a controversial point and urges clarification. According to most British official reports on silk cultivation, pebrine was said to have first broken out in 1875 in Bengal, prior to that date no pebrine was officially diagnosed. Indian reports of the same topic are more realistic as they recognize the presence of a disease whose symptoms were concernedly similar to those of pebrine (Jameson 1922). Entomologist Thomas Hutton, for instance, confirmed with no hesitation Freschi’s diagnosis, asserting that pebrine was present in many Bengali silk districts. Freschi’s report demonstrated that Indian silkworms were not immune to pebrine as it was believed by many, and paved the way to new missions further east, in search of new territories where pebrine-free silkworm eggs could be collected and imported into Italy.

170  Antonella Viola The experience of Italian silk traders in Bengal, in spite of its shortterm span, represented an important step in the long-standing relationships between Italy and India in the field of silk production and laid the groundwork for further cooperative projects for the enhancement of Indian sericulture, not only in Bengal but also in other parts of India (Viola 2008). From Torre del Greco to Calcutta: Italian coral traders Among the Italians who settled in Bengal for business purposes, there was a very specific group that specialized in trading coral. Within this group, coral traders from Torre del Greco, a small town near Naples, were largely prevalent. The core of their activity lay in the great and steady demand for red coral that has characterized the Indian market over the centuries. Such demand can be understood in full only by taking into account the specific symbolic value that coral had in the Indian civilization, and more generally in Asian cultures. Because of its red colour, considered particularly auspicious, coral was widely used in the production of jewels, talismans, and other body ornaments as well as in sacred artworks. Moreover, traditional medicine ascribed to coral several important healing qualities, which made it an important ingredient of local pharmacology. In Ayurveda medicine, for instance, coral oxide (bhasma) was and still is commonly employed. It is considered particularly efficacious to heal cough, bone fractures, eye irritation, headache, liver diseases and smallpox. As a good remedy against smallpox, coral was related, especially in Bengal, to the worship of the goddess Sitala, who offered protection against such disease. The other form of medical preparation for coral was pishti (paste), which was supposed to be even more powerful than oxide. Coral paste is said to be useful against the first stage of tuberculosis and for preventing miscarriage (Johari 1996). Even today a significant portion of the coral (coral waste) exported from Torre del Greco to India is destined for medical use. The great demand for coral in the Indian market had also a tight correlation with the huge popularity enjoyed by red coral in Tibet and Nepal (Polichetti 2006). During the 19th century, the Indo-Himalayan area was the recipient of large quantities of red coral which was first stocked in Calcutta by Italian traders and retailed throughout the region by native merchants afterwards. The chromatic symbolism of Buddhism is centred around the colour red, which is connected with blood as a vehicle of life. In traditional Tibetan iconography, the “eight-branch coral tree” is a symbol of the dharmachakra, the doctrine’s wheel. Because of the wide range of symbols and values with which coral was loaded, it was commonly used to make amulets and religious artworks. But coral was also used as a remedy in Tibetan traditional medicine. The ancient medicine textbooks ascribed a number of therapeutic qualities to red coral which were very similar to those observable in Ayurveda.

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 171 Before the 19th century, coral trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean had been characterized by a long-standing history of complex and articulated cross-cultural exchanges. Since ancient times, Indian demand for coral was massive, and reference to the use of coral in everyday life can be found in a wide range of ancient Indian texts, including the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda and the Manavadharmashastra. This proves that ancient populations in India knew coral and used it extensively. Coral and coral jewels are mentioned also in the ancient Tamil poetry, which attests to its use among Tamil people. In the Middle Ages, with a significant intensification of coral-fishing in the Mediterranean basin, the coral trade between the West and the East grew steadily (Sparti 1986). Coral was a very important commodity in Indo-Portuguese trade, and Goa soon became the main market for Mediterranean coral in the Indian Ocean. In the course of the 17th century, Leghorn in Tuscany gradually arose as the principal market for coral (Trivellato 2003). Coral fished in different parts of the Mediterranean was sent, at the end of the fishing season, to this sea-port to be sold and then processed. In the 18th century, coral fished by the coralline8 fleet from Torre del Greco – at that time a very important coral-fishing town – was almost entirely brought to Leghorn and sold there usually through the mediation of Neapolitan merchants. From Leghorn, coral was exported to India via Lisbon or London thanks to Sephardic merchants (Trivellato 2002). During the 18th century, however, the coral trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean underwent a number of significant modifications. Being tightly linked to diamond trade, the coral trade was affected by the changes in the international market for diamonds subsequent to the discovery of diamond mines in Brazil. Until the 18th century, India was the largest supplier of diamonds, but soon after the opening of the Brazilian mines, the equilibrium of the diamond and coral trade between Europe and the Indian Ocean changed dramatically: Calcutta replaced Goa as the main outlet market for coral and Gujarati merchants, who had previously dominated the coral trade in India, were replaced by other trading groups that purchased coral directly from the Italians. These changes occurred at the end of the 18th century and led to the big shift of the 19th century, when the coral trade between India and Italy was re-organized along different patterns. In the same period, the Italian coral industry underwent a number of important changes that led to the decline of Leghorn and the rise of Torre del Greco as the main centre for coral manufacturing and trade. Within a century, this town and its merchants took the lead in the coral trade and this explains why the great majority of coral traders active in the 19th century Bengal were from Torre del Greco or nearby areas. The first traces of their massive presence date back to the late 1870s, when some corallari9 opened up branch-offices in Calcutta and sent agents to Madras and Bombay. By the end of the 19th century, these traders came

172  Antonella Viola to handle an intense and very profitable trade, which was organized to meet the requirements of Indian customers. Until World War I, coral was the most important product that Italy exported to India (Viola 2008) and along with glass-beads, mainly exported from Venice by the Società Veneziana per l’Industria delle conterie, it was the only Italian product specifically designed for Indian consumers. The great majority of coral exported to South Asia was usually of two types: raw coral and processed coral. The latter could be corallo di fabbrica (oval-shaped polished coral beads) or camolato (spherical beads of porous coral). As has been pointed out, in the second half of the 19th century, coraltraders from Torre del Greco came to control the Indian market for coral. Other firms were also active in India in the same period such as the Checcacci  & Co. from Leghorn, and the Raffaele Costa  & Co. from Genoa, but those from Torre del Greco were certainly preponderant. The largest companies active in Calcutta were Bartolomeo Mazza & Co. and M. Palomba & Co., the Indian branches of two of the most important firms engaged in the coral industry in Torre del Greco. They employed several agents who took care of their business in the major Indian cities. Other smaller coral traders were also active in Calcutta, along with several agents who dealt in coral. The organization of the companies which traded in coral embodies somehow the typical organizational patterns of Italian traders in India. The family was at the core of the business; it provided human resources as well as capital; it gave to the firm the suitable stability and the necessary flexibility to comfortably operate abroad. The links between the branches and the mother house were particularly tight, and the latter supervised all commercial activities. However, such control was not all-encompassing, and the branch offices had the chance to operate, in some cases, quite autonomously according to their knowledge of the marketplace. The overseas branch offices were usually entrusted to one or more male members of the family, who settled in Calcutta in order to manage the branch and supervise sales, but also to get in touch directly with Indian intermediaries and customers. Coral was stocked in Calcutta, but being in great demand all over India, it had to be distributed to other places. Indian agents and intermediaries opened the door of the domestic distribution channels to Italian companies, allowing them to widen their operating range towards inner marketplaces, which otherwise would have been too far away and difficult to access. Trading coral in Calcutta: organizational models and business strategies Italian coral traders in Bengal organized their business in two different ways: they could either establish themselves in Calcutta or hire agents who

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 173 settled in the main Indian cities. The first way was usually adopted by those companies which had the financial means to afford the opening of overseas branch offices. Coral manufacturers like M. Palomba & Co., B. Mazza & Co. and Gallo  & Scognamiglio were among them. Their Calcutta-based offices were opened and managed by family members. Those firms which did not have the resources to open branch offices in India used to hire agents, who operated mainly in Calcutta and Bombay and could travel throughout the subcontinent, if necessary. Many coral manufacturers from Torre del Greco, such as Giovanni Ascione & Figlio and Antonino De Simone, handled their commercial relations with India through agents on the spot. In order to maximize profits and reduce agency costs, several agents, usually Italian citizens, traded and sold coral on behalf of many different coral manufacturers. For instance, one agent settled in Calcutta could manage the trading transactions of many different coral producers, as in the case of Enrico Gianquinto, who in the early 20th century sold coral in Bengal on behalf of several coral traders from Torre del Greco.10 In some specific cases, local brokers were also hired, acting as intermediaries between the Italians and Indian retailers who redistributed coral domestically. Italian coral traders did not enter local networks of retailing and distribution, which were entirely in the hands of natives. Domestic distribution channels, in fact, changed according to the different usage to which coral was destined: for instance, Indian coral merchants who purchased coral in the shape of beads or sticks re-sold them as they stood or wholesaled them to jewellers, while Indian merchants who bought raw coral resold it through a distribution network that touched centres of traditional medicine scattered all over India or places where craftsmen combined it with other precious or semi-precious materials to make a wide range of decorative ornaments and artworks. Because of the highly complex networks that marked the circulation and retailing of Mediterranean coral within the Indian domestic market, Italian coral-traders in Bengal had to establish a wide range of business relations with Indian merchants. The profile of these local merchants emerges in the commercial correspondence of Italian coral traders and can be partially sketched out by using the historical records of coral manufacturers in Torre del Greco. On the basis of the documentation scrutinized, it appears that in Calcutta, the purchasers of Italian coral were mostly Marwaris, and Bengalis on a smaller scale. In Bombay, Italian coral traders had Parsi merchants as their main referents, whereas in Madras, Tamil and Gujarati traders were among Italians’ favoured trading partners. Some Indian merchants also developed and kept close trading relations with coral manufacturers in Italy, from which they were supplied directly with all the kinds and quantities of coral they needed. This is the case, for instance, of the firm run by Hariram Dinanath that had contacts with Italian coral traders in Calcutta

174  Antonella Viola as well as with coral producers in Torre del Greco. The firm operated in Calcutta and Amritsar and purchased coral from R. Costa & Co. and from the Liverino family in Torre del Greco. Among the Indian merchants that bought coral from the Italians, some groups were overrepresented, like the Parsis and Marwaris, who most probably controlled large swathes of the distribution chain of Mediterranean coral in the main Indian cities, leaving distribution in the hinterland to other traders who acted as retailers. Those Indian merchants who worked with Italian coral traders became part of extensive networks within which a vast array of relationships was forged, maintained and enhanced over several decades. The relations between Italian and Indian merchants usually started with the collection of information about the firm’s reputability and reliability, and further developed along patterns of mutual understanding and the sharing of similar business strategies and practices. Information about Italian firms circulated in the bazar, where information on Indian merchants could also be picked up. Financial soundness and trustworthiness were important preconditions for the establishment of any good and profitable business relation. Information circulated quite easily among merchants and was stratified as a baggage of business knowledge that allowed them to make the right choice when it came to decide which firm was to be trusted. Personal relationships, friendship, a similar entrepreneurial culture, prolonged contacts and shared trading practices helped ease the cooperation between Italian and Indian merchants. This is amply attested to by a great deal of letters exchanged between them over the years. A case in point is the first letter addressed to R. Costa & Co. by Jeejibhoy & Co. that had been advised by a business friend about the opportunity of contacting the Italian firm to get supplies of a certain quantity of coral.11 Business correspondences enabled many coral traders from Torre del Greco that did not have branch offices in Bengal to keep in contact with their overseas trading partners and agents. The recurrent exchange of letters was the backbone of the trading networks established by Italian coral traders in Calcutta, and it enabled them to efficiently convey updated news on market trends and firms. It also helped disseminate information regarding local taste, fashion and other aspects of domestic patterns of consumption. This information was particularly important for those who were specialized in creating products, mostly jewels, exclusively for Indian customers. This is the case, for instance, of coral manufacturers like Vincenzo Carlone, Aniello Gentile, and Francesco Ciaravolo, that designed and created products on the basis of the suggestions given by their Indian agents. Within the community of Italian coral traders in Calcutta, information was shared among the members in order to safeguard individual as well as collective interests. In this regard, the small community worked like trading

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 175 diasporas did, disseminating information among its members to preserve and safeguard everyone’s business. The level of trust and confidence that coral traders managed to reach with their Indian trading partners seems, in general, to have been very high, but given that each firm operated in India according to its own peculiar trajectory, degrees of trustworthiness varied accordingly. Italian coral traders in Bengal and Japanese coral In the late 19th century, the coral trade between Italy and India underwent an important modification when Japanese coral made its appearance in the international market. Italians initially perceived this new variety of coral, which was bigger and cheaper than the Mediterranean one, as a threat to their business. But within a few years, they realized that Japanese coral could be an opportunity rather than a threat. The large-scale introduction of Japanese coral in India was probably conducted systematically by coral traders based in Calcutta. However, there are several hints that Indians knew coral from the Chinese Sea well before the late 19th century. At least on the Coromandel coast, this was likely a product commonly traded already at the time of the early Chola dynasty. References to coral coming from the eastern sea are made in Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts.12 It is interesting to note – perhaps a sheer coincidence, perhaps not – that the place where Italians saw the first stocks of Japanese coral was precisely Madras. Italian coral traders in Bengal pioneered the trade in Japanese coral from Japan to Italy via Calcutta. Those who first travelled to Japan to purchase stocks of the local coral were members of the Mazza family13 who reached Kobe and Osaka together with Andrea e Michele Scognamiglio.14 Once in Japan they bought raw coral and shipped it to Torre del Greco to be processed. In the beginning, the quantity of raw coral which was purchased in Japan by the Italians was limited as Italian manufacturers were initially averse to processing the new kind of coral. But within a decade, the quantity of Japanese coral imported into Italy grew massively (Viola 2008). Most of the coral imported into Italy via Calcutta from Japan was re-shipped again to Calcutta after being processed as corallo di fabbrica. Japanese coral became, within a couple of decades, extremely important for the Italian coral industry, and in the early 20th century, Italy became entirely dependent upon supplies from Japan.15 As Italian coral traders in Bengal began to import it systematically and make extensive use of it, Calcutta consequently became the hub of this new triangular trade which linked Italy, India and Japan. Until World War I, the coral trade with India was a thriving business for Italian traders in Bengal, who invested human and financial resources in it. The result of those efforts was the growing profits they were able to make, as coral fetched a high price throughout the first decade of the 20th

176  Antonella Viola century. The outbreak of the war, however, badly hit the activities of Italian coral traders. The letters addressed to the latter by their Indian trading partners confirm that the conjuncture was particularly difficult, and only low-priced corals were in demand, as suggested by a Madras-based Indian coral merchant in one of his letters.16 The trend continued to be negative also in the 1920s. In 1923, for instance, a Parsi firm from Bombay asked its Italian coral suppliers and agents in Calcutta to send only coral-sticks and pieces with the lowest prices.17 World War I, therefore, marked the end of the heyday of the coral business in Calcutta and in India as a whole. The coral trade between Italy and India was no longer a highly profitable business and, as a result, Italian coral traders in Bengal began to look elsewhere for opportunities. Nonetheless, the subcontinent remained an important market for Mediterranean coral and still today a good portion of coral produced in Torre del Greco finds its way to the Indian market. Italian traders in Bengal: some final considerations Italian economic operators in Bengal can be considered a good example of expatriate family capitalism, whose defining features were the overpowering role of family ties in the firm’s structuring and managing, the tendency to establish extensive trading networks and capitalize on the social and economic resources inherent to such networks. In India, a business organization of this sort helped reduce the impact of market constraints and institutional inefficiency on the firms’ performances and output. As already noted, a thick network of cooperative relations with local economic operators was a suitable device to overcome most of the difficulties with which Italians were confronted. In hindsight, the extensive use of a network-based trading organization appeared to be a clever market strategy for maximizing profits. In Bengal, Italian traders established complex networks which included both European and Indian traders. The latter, in particular, often played a kingpin role in the making of Italian trading activities. One of the most striking cases is perhaps that of Turnyneychurn Bose, who worked for more than thirty years with the Genoese company, Oliva & Casella. The importance of Indian traders in the making of the Italians’ trading networks prompted a reflection about India’s domestic economy under colonial rule. The way Italians carried out their activities, and particularly their cooperation with local merchants, who controlled domestic channels of production and distribution, shows that in economic sectors operating outside the British-dominated commercial circuits, Indians were able to find new ways of prospering even under a colonial regime. If one looks at the Indian economy through the lens of the experience of Italian traders, the empire’s grip seems less invasive than it might appear at a first glance.

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 177 British dominance was concentrated in a few sectors which were strategically important for and within the imperial system, but their relevance for the Indian economy as a whole should not be overestimated. At the same time, the resilience of native economic actors should not be downplayed, especially their ability to cope with the modifications determined by the emergence of a colonial economy by re-organizing themselves according to alternative developmental patterns. For instance, Indians continued to handle most of the trade linking India to other Asian markets and this was done in many cases outside the British imperial system, and often in competition with it (Ray 1995). From a completely different analytic perspective, the experience of Italian traders in Bengal calls for a reconsideration of the process of Italian unification, especially its political and economic consequences. Among the Italians residing in Calcutta, the values embodied in and conveyed by the Risorgimento were apparently widespread. However, the gap between social attitudes and specific economic behaviours seems to suggest that they abstractly subscribed to ideas about nationhood without, however, turning them into practices of national cohesiveness; nor did they use such values and ideas in the pursuit of collective goals. In everyday life, the patterns of sociability of the Italians in Bengal mirrored an identity based on bourgeois beliefs, shared self-perception and self-representation and a more general sense of belonging to a wider European expatriate community. In terms of economic behaviour, however, Italians showed a varying degree of regionalism. What is striking, in this regard, is their habit to create sub-groups within the national group they belonged to. These sub-groups, which included traders coming from the same place or region in Italy, were the cornerstone of a shared cultural identity in which each trader recognized himself. The sub-group, which was not a closed entity, often became the main socio-economic unit on which the Italians developed the embryonic ties forming their domestic and overseas trading networks. Coral traders in Calcutta are probably the best example of how homogeneous regional groups within the Italian business community in Calcutta managed to operate and thrive on the basis of their shared origin. They tended to act as members of a community which recognized itself not only in the business activity they were all carrying out, but more importantly in the commonality of interests and in their common geographical origin. Regionalistic attitudes found their breeding ground in the cultural background that coral traders shared, but they were also the outcome of a common entrepreneurial culture, marked by shared models of socio-economic aggregation, and long-lasting traditions of cooperativeness. In Calcutta, Italian coral traders reproduced and widened these well-proven patterns of business development and partially adjusted them to better fit in the new economic environment. Among Italians in Bengal, therefore, there was a

178  Antonella Viola subtle contraposition between nationalism and regionalism/localism, with the latter prevailing in the business practices, market strategies and in the everyday management of trading activities. In conclusion, it is important to remark that Italian economic expansion in India was also linked to the rise of indology and oriental studies in Italy from the second half of the 19th century onwards. A prominent figure like Manfredo Camperio, founder of the Consorzio Italiano per il Commercio con l’Estremo Oriente,18 was a great admirer of Indian culture. He named his daughter Sita as a homage to Indian civilization and required his agents in the subcontinent to be fluent in at least one Indian language. Indo-Italian trading relationships were also supported by Carlo Feltrinelli,19 who financially backed the business activities launched by Giovanni Gorio.20 The interrelationship between cultural and economic aspects in the making of Italian commercial expansion in India, and in Asia as a whole, is well-summarized in the following excerpt from Giornale della Società Asiatica Italiana: Asia should not simply be a field of academic exercises, but of revealing studies; we want to know her better in order to better dominate her, but not by means of weapons, instead through the use of intellect and sympathy, by means of our scientific, religious, artistic missions and commercial enterprises and through every possible civilized mission.21 In this excerpt from a discourse addressed to the members of the Italian Asiatic Society by its president, Angelo De Gubernatis, commercial enterprises are mentioned along with scientific, artistic and religious missions as a way to establish fruitful relationships with Asian countries. There is little doubt that Italian traders in Bengal contributed to the achievement of the goals envisaged by all those, within and outside academic circles and institutions, who considered the Italian presence in Asia extremely important. In many regards, they were the pioneers of Indo-Italian economic relationships and their activities paved the way for a deeper and more comprehensive cooperation between both countries. Notes 1 Statistica della Emigrazione Italiana all’Estero nel 1881 confrontata con quella degli anni precedenti e coll’emigrazione avvenuta da altri stati. India Inglese. Rome: Direzione Generale della Statistica, Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, 1882. All translations from the original Italian in this chapter are the author’s. 2 See Atti del I  Congresso degli esportatori italiani in Oriente, Venezia, 1910; Atti del I Congresso degli italiani all’estero, Roma, 1911. 3 See “Gli Italiani nella Presidenza di Bombay,” in Emigrazione e colonie. Raccolta di rapporti di Regi Agenti consolari e diplomatici, Vol. 3, Asia, Africa e Oceania, Rome, 1906.

“The Italian . . . who comes here to try his luck . . .” 179 4 The name pebrine used to refer to a severe disease that affected silkworms, it was caused by a protozoan parasite, Nosema Bombycis. 5 In the sericulture’s jargon, the word seed indicates silkworms’ eggs. 6 Giuseppe Casella was the co-owner of the Genoese firm Oliva & Casella. This trading house handled an extensive commercial network which spanned from India to China and provided several financial services to other Italians, including missionaries. 7 G. De Cristoforis, member of a reputed family from Milan, arrived in Bengal in 1851 as the country manager of the firm Jung & Co. 8 Boats specifically equipped to fish coral. 9 Corallari is the term used in Italian to refer to those who produce and trade coral. 10 Letter from E. Giaquinto to Raffaele Costa, Calcutta, 5 June  1913. Business correspondence of the Raffaele Costa  & Co. Private archive of B. Liverino, Torre del Greco, Napoli. 11 “We (.  .  .) owe your esteemed address to the recommendation of a business friend”. Letter from Jeejibhoy  & Co. to R. Costa  & Co., 27 October  1927. Private archive of B. Liverino, Torre del Greco, Napoli. 12 In ancient Tamil texts, coral is known under two names: pavalam (from Sanskrit) that indicated coral coming from the Western seas, and thukir that referred to coral from the Eastern seas. 13 Leonardo and Mattia Mazza, who managed the Calcutta office of Bartolomeo Mazza & Co. 14 They operated the branch office of Gallo & Scognamiglio, a firm active in Calcutta in the 1880s. 15 See “La pesca del Corallo in Giappone”, Rapporto del Conte C. Arrivabene. Bollettino della Direzione degli affari commerciali: Rapporti e relazioni, Rome, 1912. Archivio Storico-Diplomatico del Ministero Affari Esteri. 16 Letter from C. Jeeyer of Jeeyar & Co. to R. Costa, Madras, 8 May 1913. Business correspondence of R. Costa & Co. Private archive of B. Liverino, Torre del Greco, Napoli. 17 Letter from K. Jeejibhoy & Co. to R. Costa, 27 October 1923. Ibid. 18 This Italian Association for the Far East Trade was founded in 1895 with the purpose of enhancing the economic and commercial relations between Italy and Asia; it established a number of trading agencies in the main Asian cities. 19 Carlo Feltrinelli (Milan 1881–1935) was a prominent banker and entrepreneur. 20 Giovanni Gorio was an Italian entrepreneur who had many diversified interests in Bombay, Calcutta and Mysore. He served as the Italian consul in Bombay for a few years. 21 “Atti della Società Asiatica Italiana,” Giornale della Società Asiatica Italiana vol. II, 1888: p. IV.

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180  Antonella Viola De Courten, Ludovica. 1989. La Marina Mercantile Italiana nella politica di espansione (1860–1914). Industria, finanza e trasporti marittimi. Roma: Bulzoni. Federico, Giovanni. 1997. An Economic History of the Silk Industry, 1830–1930. Cambridge: University Press. Jameson, A. Pringle. 1922. A Report on the Diseases of Silkworms in India. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing. Johari, Harish. 1996. The Healing Power of Gemstones: In Tantra, Ayurveda and Astrology. Rochester: Destiny Books. Jones, Geoffrey. 2000. Merchants to Multinationals. British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press. Marcos-Dodis, Dione. 2002. A Chronicle of the Greeks in India, 1750–1950. Athens: Dodoni Publications. Polichetti, Massimiliano Alessandro. 2006. “Una nota sull’impiego e la simbologia del corallo in Tibet.” In Coralli Segreti. Immagini e miti dal mare tra Oriente e Occidente, 190–95. Potenza: Museo Archeologico Nazionale della Basilicata. Ray, Rajat Kanta. 1995. “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914.” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3: 449–554. Sabbatini, Leopoldo. 1911. Per le nostre esportazioni: appunti sul movimento e sulla organizzazione del commercio di esportazione in Italia. Milano: Vallardi Editore. Sparti, Aldo, ed. 1986. Fonti per la storia del corallo nel Medioevo Mediterraneo, Palermo: Publisicula. Trivellato, Francesca. 2002. “Jews of Leghorn, Italians in Lisbon, and Hindus of Goa: Merchant Networks and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period.” In Commercial Networks in the Early Modern World, edited by D. R. Curto and A. Molho, 59–89. San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute. ———. 2003. “La fiera del corallo (Livorno, secoli XVII e XVIII): istituzioni e autoregolamentazione del mercato in età moderna.” In La pratica dello scambio. Sistemi di fiere, città e mercanti in Europa (1400–1700), edited by P. Lanaro, 111–27. Venezia: Marsilio. Viola, Antonella. 2006. “Italian traders in the 19th century South Asia.” In Colonialism and Imperialism: Between Ideologies and Practices, edited by D. R. Curto and A. Rappas, 27–36. San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute. ———. 2008. “Italians in India, 1860–1920. Trades, Traders and Tradingnetworks.” PhD diss., European University Institute. ———. 2012a. “I mangiatori di spaghetti. Il cibo e l’identità degli Italiani nell’India Britannica (1860–1920 ca).” Snodi. Pubblici e privati nella storia contemporanea 8: 14–39. ———. 2012b. “L’Orientalismo a tavola. Percezione e rappresentazione dell’alimentazione indiana nei racconti dei viaggiatori e residenti italiani nell’India Britannica (1860–1930).” In Orientalismi italiani, edited by G. Proglio, Vol. I, 226–40. Alba: Antares. Zanier, Claudio. 1993. Alla ricerca del seme perduto: sulla via della seta tra scienza e speculazione, 1858–1862. Milano: Franco Angeli.

9 Travels in Italy Bengali Writings in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries Sanjukta Das Gupta

In 1979, Monindra Mohan Moulik published a long autobiographical poem on Rome, where he had spent several years first as a student in the 1930s and then in various official positions. Extolling the Eternal City as the “Temple of Man” rather than a “common graveyard of history”, he drew an evocative picture of the timelessness of the city “in the murmur of its fountains, / in the chimes of its campanili, / in the echoes of footsteps / on the cobbled streets” (Moulik 1979, 12–13). This brings to mind another poem, an effusive eulogy dedicated to Albion, written nearly a century ago by a fellow Bengali, Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Dutt 1955, 438). The difference lay in the fact that while Moulik’s poetry was imbued with nostalgia for a lived past, Madhusudan’s expressed his longing for a country that shaped his thoughts and ideas, but one which he was yet to experience Since the mid-19th century, especially after the introduction of steam navigation and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, an increasing number of educated Bengalis travelled to Europe for higher education, to sit for Indian Civil Service entrance examinations, and occasionally for tourism. The desire to travel to Europe, however, was not fuelled solely by material considerations. For a large section of the Western-educated colonised Bengali elite, a voyage to Europe signified, above all, a pilgrimage. To them, Western civilisation represented humanity, modernity and progress, and their mental world was structured, among other things, by a longing for Europe and by an urgent need for a physical encounter with the West (Sen 2005, 6). There was, of course, a strong orthodoxy which condemned sea voyages and travels across the seas.1 However, the Bengali bhadralok’s “love” for Europe, as Partha Chatterjee terms it (Chatterjee 1998, 1335) persisted well into the 20th century despite the growth of a stringent nationalist critique of colonialism and imperialism. Thus, in his lecture delivered at Circolo Filologico in Milan on 22 February  1925, the poet Rabindranath Tagore spoke of his “longing to come to Europe and see the human spirit in the full blaze of its power and beauty” (Tagore 1925, 4).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-13

182  Sanjukta Das Gupta The Italian cities of Naples and Brindisi were often the first European ports of call for ships sailing westwards and hence, the site of the initial encounter with Europe for many Bengali travellers. The significance of this is underlined in Tagore’s recollection of his first visit to Europe in 1878 as a youth: Italy was my first introduction to Europe. In those days the steamers stopped at Brindisi, and I still remember, when we reached the port, it was midnight under a full moon. I came rushing up on deck from my bed, and shall never forget that marvellous scene, enveloped in the silent mystery of the moonlight – the sight of Europe asleep, like a maiden dreaming of beauty and peace. (Ibid.) A few years later, Krishnabhabini Das2 wrote about her curiosity and joy that was “impossible to express” (Das 1885, 46) when she disembarked from the ship at Venice. Bengali travellers to the West exhibited a keen awareness of the sites and cultural riches they expected to encounter. Indeed they “knew” Europe, even without having travelled there,3 and thus, in their travels, they encountered a Europe that they had already internalised (Nandy 2010, viii). There were, of course, differences in their perceptions, arising from differences in motivations for travel,4 social standing, interests and political beliefs, as also the length of stay in the countries visited, all of which were reflected in the accounts left by the raconteurs. These differences were especially marked in the case of short-term and long-term visitors to Italy. In this chapter, I identify two phases of travel writing. In the first phase, from the 1870s till the first decade of the 20th century, it was England which symbolised European modernity to many of the Bengali tourists to Italy, who tended to relegate Italy to Europe’s “backwaters” (Sen 2005, 188). Such a characterisation can be contrasted with the writings of Indian students and scholars of the second phase during the 1920s and 1930s, which marked a deeper appreciation of contemporary Italian society, art and culture. Through an analysis of selected travelogues and writings of Bengali visitors to Italy, this chapter explores these issues in three sections. The first provides an overview of how knowledge about the art and culture of Italy came to be disseminated among the 19th-century English-educated Bengali intelligentsia. The second section analyses the writings of male tourists, including renowned personalities like the civil servant Romesh Chunder Dutt, the maharaja of Burdwan Bijoy Chand Mahtab, the noted Bengali writer Trailokyanath Mukharji, and the Catholic nationalist Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, as well as those of the early women educationists Krishnabhabini Das and Abala Bose, who undertook a trip to the Continent to

Travels in Italy 183 round off their visit to England. The third section explores the writings of scholars like Benoy Sarkar, Kalidas Nag and Monindra Mohan Moulik, the homemaker Durgabati Ghose and the cyclist Bimal Mukherjee, all of whom visited Italy between the 1920s and 1930s. Experiencing Italy in 19th-century Bengal Thanks to their status as colonised subjects of the British, English-educated Bengalis became familiar with aspects of Italy’s Roman past and Renaissance arts and literature. In course of the 19th century, the British Empire in India modelled itself on the imperial vision of ancient Greece and Rome, that is, as a civilising force that was defined by the ideals of law and order. Classical architecture was one of the forms through which Britain sought to represent its worldwide authority. On the one hand, it linked the British Empire to the ancient Graeco-Roman world and at the same time, projected the image of modernity to the Indian subjects (Metcalf 1998, 51). It was therefore through the British intervention that Indians acquired a taste for Italian art and culture, as evidenced by the growing demand for Italian and European artworks among the Bengali elite. British claim to the classical heritage was also reinforced through English education provided by the government which included Graeco-Roman history and mythology. Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), for instance, comprised part of the curriculum of the Hindu College, and formed a basis for the understanding of Western intellectual ideas, the history of the world and the position of the British Empire (Mukherjee 2009, 318). Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d, Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome and the plays of Shakespeare constituted the standard fare in the literature curriculum of government schools (Viswanathan 1989, 54), while Byron’s poems were eagerly read by the English-educated Bengalis in Calcutta (162). At the same time, parallels between Indian and Graeco-Roman religion and mythology were traced by Orientalist scholars like William Jones whose article On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India (Jones 1784, 221–75) emphasised the similarities between Indian and Greek gods. Knowledge of Roman history and mythology was not restricted to the English-speaking elite, however. Since it was a compulsory subject in the junior school scholarship examination, several Bengali language textbooks were published, such as Bhudev Mukhopadhyay’s Romer Itihas (History of Rome) (1863), which popularised such histories among school children. Together with these school textbooks, articles on the histories of ancient Greece and Rome were regularly published in Bengali literary journals for the edification of the reading public.5 The Calcutta School Book Society also published Bengali books and periodicals which were primarily intended to

184  Sanjukta Das Gupta impart general knowledge and moral instruction, but indirectly served to familiarise Bengali children with the Italian landscape. The monthly magazine Pashwabali (Animal Biography),6 for instance, published a collection of lessons containing anecdotes of animals and their habitat in settings like Rome, Naples and London. Moral training manuals, such as the Bengali primer Barnamala (Garland of Alphabets) (1854), also included stories of friendship, honesty and gratitude based in Sicily, Rome and England, usually translated from English schoolbooks (Dutta 2021, 136, 153). It is through these texts that educated Bengalis of the 19th century became acquainted with Italian history, legends and culture. Another area that highlighted Italy’s prominent place in European culture to the Bengali public was the literature of the Renaissance period. Certain writers like Dante, Petrarch and Tasso in particular influenced some of the most popular authors in 19th-century Bengal, Michael Madhusudhan Dutt being perhaps the most striking example.7 Dante, with his Divine Comedy, was an inspiration for generations of Bengali writers.8 Both English education and Bengali literary production thus combined to create an awareness of and an interest in Italian literature among the urban elite of Bengal, an interest which remained alive in the 20th century as well. Since the mid-19th century, however, contemporary Italy also began to capture the imagination of the Bengali intelligentsia, the bhadralok, who consciously looked to Europe for models for their political action. They sought inspiration in the ideologies of the Risorgimento, particularly in the writings of Mazzini. The nationalist political leader Surendranath Banerjea, who had been introduced to Mazzini’s writings during his stay in England, thus wrote in his autobiography: Upon my mind the writings of Mazzini had created a profound impression. The purity of his patriotism, the loftiness of his ideals, and his all-embracing love for humanity, expressed with the true eloquence of the heart, moved me as I  had never before been moved. .  .  . It was Mazzini, the incarnation of the highest moral forces in the political arena – Mazzini, the apostle of Italian unity, the friend of the human race, that I presented to the youth of Bengal. (Banerjea 1925, 43) On his return to India, Surendranath, inspired by the affective and emotional aspects of Mazzini’s nationalism (Bayly 2008), delivered lectures in Calcutta and in the suburban towns on the life of Mazzini and Garibaldi, whom he called “apostles” and “prophets” who had awakened Italy’s national consciousness through their extreme sacrifice. The impact of his lectures can be gauged from a passage in the autobiography of another nationalist leader, Bipin Chandra Pal, who stated that he, together with

Travels in Italy 185 other nationalist youth, had been motivated by Surendranath to “read the writings of Mazzini and the history of the Young Italy movements” (Pal 1932, 245–46). On Surendranath’s request, the distinguished Bengali writer Jogendranath Vidyabhushan wrote two biographies entitled Josef Matsini O Nabya Italy (Joseph Mazzini and New Italy) (1879) and Josef Garibaldir Jiban Brittanta (The Life of Joseph Garibaldi) (1890), in order to familiarise Bengali readers with the life and work of Mazzini. These and later biographies9 became popular political texts of the time and were avidly read both in revolutionary circles modelled on the Carbonari and Mazzini’s Young Italy Society (Tripathi 1967, 81) and by the general reading public. The resulting image of Italy was thus derived from three principal themes – the history and culture of ancient Rome, Renaissance literature and the Risorgimento, which informed, though not always coherently, the travel writings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was these aspects that our travellers sought out, consciously or unconsciously, and shaped their experience of the lived reality of Italy. Early travels to Italy: 1870s–1910 Despite Surendranath’s fascination with Mazzini and Garibaldi, he did not refer to them in connection with his Italian trip in 1871 when he made a hurried tour of Venice on his way back to India from England via the port of Brindisi. Venice, in fact, merited only a brief paragraph in which he described it as a “unique city, both in its physical and historic aspects” (Banerjea 1925, 25). Surendranath’s recollections were, of course, part of a long narrative of his life work and not intended as a travelogue of their European sojourn which, he wrote, had been planned and carried out “with almost military precision” (21). His travel companion, R.C. Dutt left a longer account in his book Three Years in Europe (1896), but this also lacked any reference to Mazzini, or indeed to the contemporary political situation. As students with limited resources and time, Surendranath and R.C. Dutt did not have the luxury of leisurely reflection, yet it is mystifying that there is no mention of the political theorist who had helped to forge the nation state they were visiting and who had a profound influence on at least one of the two travellers. Significantly, it was a female traveller, Krishnabhabini Das, who, while noting the similarities between India and Italy, remarked that contemporary Italians who had been subjected to foreign rule for many centuries could bury their differences under the leadership of Mazzini and Garibaldi and regain their independence. India, in contrast, remained trapped in a deep slumber (Das 1885, 50). All the Bengali travelogues of this period acknowledged the artistic and historical heritage of Italy. Since central and south European countries were still rarely visited by Bengalis, who mainly went to England for

186  Sanjukta Das Gupta study, the travel-writers gave detailed descriptions of the historic sites and museums with an intention to educate the readers and help future visitors. R.C. Dutt, in fact, intended his travelogue to serve as a guidebook for Indian travellers to Europe, but one which went beyond the “ordinary guidebooks” by providing “the views and opinions of a foreigner for the first time coming in contact with the noble institutions of the West” (Dutt 1896, ii). The recounting of his initial trip in 1871 to Lake Como, Milan and Venice resembled a detailed catalogue replete with copious descriptions – very similar to the Baedeker guide that Dutt recommended to future visitors (354) – and was almost unconnected with thoughts and ideas. Bijay Chand Mahtab expressed a similar wish that his book would serve as a guide to other Indian princes contemplating a tour in Europe (Mahtab 1908, Preface). Bengali travellers to Europe belonged to a social class that was wellinformed about European culture through their readings of history and literature and literary allusions were peppered throughout their travelogues. Dutt’s second, longer, trip to Italy in 1896 took him to the major cities across Italy, the accounts of which show his familiarity with the landmarks and scenes that he expected to see. Thus, if Venice, the “lovely place, this queen of the sea, this wreck of an ancient and mighty republic” (Dutt 1896, 94), moved him to quote from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Florence, which “imparted to a dead world the vivifying energy of poetry and literature, of painting and sculpture, of arts and civilisation” (316), inspired him to recollect Samuel Rogers’s poem on the city. Similarly, Mahtab recommended that all travellers should read Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage before visiting Italy and Greece (Mahtab 1908, 54). In Rome, Dutt recalled that it was among the ruins at the Colosseum that “the historian Gibbon was first inspired with the idea of his matchless history” and that “Byron composed some of the sublimest passages that even he ever wrote” (Dutt 1896, 321). The Rialto Bridge in Venice and the so-called palace of the Capulets in Verona evoked the inevitable references to Shakespeare, while the view of rivulets running down the Etruscan Apennines near Florence reminded Trailokyanath Mukharji10 of “cool streams flowing down the verdant slopes of Casentino’s hills” from Dante’s Inferno, canto 30 (Mukharji 1889, 375), and Michelangelo’s unfinished Night and Day at the Medici Chapel in Florence inspired Mahtab to recite from the French poet De Musset (Mahtab 1908, 53). Once the initial euphoria had passed, a more sober assessment of Italian reality set in. Thus, Tagore observed, Brindisi was just like any other little town. There were many houses, shops and lanes, but not a single thing that you would look at in wonder. Beggars were begging, a small group was sitting at a wine shop and

Travels in Italy 187 chatting, another group was bantering at the corner of the road, people generally were roaming about with the majesty of an elephant and a carefree expression on their faces – as if no one had any work to do, or anything to worry about, and the entire city was on vacation. There was little traffic on the roads, and no crowd. (Tagore 1936, 15)11 Almost all the travellers noted the dirt, particularly in the cities of South Italy, which did not create a good impression. Nor did the sight of shabbily dressed Italian porters which greeted them in the port of Brindisi (Mahtab 1908, 9), though it was a novelty for them to see white, rather than “tawny-coloured” Indian coolies. In fact, one of the few references that R.C. Dutt made to contemporary Italy was to express his disgust with the dirt in Naples, and with beggars, who though rare in England, France or Germany, were a “nuisance in Italy” (Dutt 1896, 338). Mahtab contrasted his first view of Naples, its “fine streets” and “fine statues of Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Victor Emmanuel” which left him “dazzled” (Mahtab 1908, 15), with the mayhem in the streets, where he proved to be the object of scrutiny much in the same way that he scrutinised the local people: The people struck me as being by nature inquisitive and easily excitable, especially if they see any foreigners, and as it seemed to me, especially Indians. . . . Idlers and tramps abound in Naples. Organ grinders, fiddlers, singers with mandolins and guitars will follow you about everywhere and are simply a nuisance. Then you have boys like monkeys, who will dive into the sea in the bleakest morning for a few francs, and when you throw a coin into the water they cleverly fish it out. (29) Pointing at the poverty in South Italy and the very real difference in development between the north and the south, the passage seemed to indicate a reversal of roles between the East and the imagined West. The everyday customs and habits of the people were also noted carefully. Girishchandra Basu, who had undertaken a lightning tour of Turin from Switzerland to visit the General Italian Artistic and Industrial Exhibition in 1884, was greatly impressed with the piazzas in Turin, particularly with the immensity of the Piazza Castello. Although he had imagined it to be an empty space, in reality, he found the piazza to be brimming with life energy, especially in the evenings when Italians ventured out for leisure walks (Basu 1884, 218–19). Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, however, was acutely discomfited by public displays of affection among couples which he encountered in his train journey from Naples to Rome (Upadhyay 1906, 7).12

188  Sanjukta Das Gupta Not only contemporary social practice, but that of the past appeared prurient to visitors from India. Both Dutt and Mahtab were scandalised by the sexual motifs in Pompeii; the former with the “indelicate paintings” in the brothels and private residences (Dutt 1896, 345), and the latter with the exhibits in the private room at the Museum in Naples which reminded him of “vulgar Tantric” practices in India and seemed to demonstrate “what the depravity and the demoralization must have been amongst the Pompeiians” (Mahtab 1908, 16–17). As the Bengali bhadralok consciously modelled themselves on Victorian gentility in the 19th century, they had distanced themselves from popular practices which were now deemed to be obscene and indicative of a lower level of civilisation. The writings of female travellers, on the other hand, made no mention of such “depravity”13 and provided a very different view of Pompeii. At the turn of the century, Abala Bose14 wrote a moving description of a cast bearing the imprint of a mother clasping her child to her bosom, an embrace that the burning volcanic ashes could not loosen. “The past and present blended together through the mother’s loving touch. The past and the present, the East and the West are bound together with the same sorrow, the same love and affection” (Bose 2019, 362). The choice of her anecdote demonstrates her intention to emphasise the universality of maternal love. In contrast to the male perception which assessed Pompeii in moral terms of civilisational inferiority based upon the uninhibited display of sexual motifs, the female gaze upheld the aspect of shared humanity. Certain similarities, some superficial, others more profound, were perceived between conditions in Italy and India. The narrow, clean streets – of north Italy, and not the south – and well-plastered houses reminded R.C. Dutt of streets of Calcutta and the square courtyards inside the large houses, of Indian courtyards (Dutt 1896, 309). He found a resemblance in the religious practices of the two countries, likening the images of the saints and the Madonna with those of Lakshmi or Kartikeya dressed in Indian robes. Krishnabhabini underlined the parallels between Hindu and ancient Roman rituals (Das 1885, 50) while Brahmabandhab Upadhyay commented on the similarity in the religious practices of Hindus and Catholics (Upadhyay 1906, 11). This was not simply a superficial resemblance, but had deeper, underlying historical roots, as Dutt elaborated: The same genial climate and fertile soil enabled the peoples of India and of Italy to light the lamp of civilization at a time when northern nations were buried in barbarism. But as these nations rose in their turn, that ancient civilization declined. After the tenth century Italy and India were the unfortunate battlefields of foreigners, – India of the Moslem and Italy of the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Austrian. (Dutt 1896, 310)

Travels in Italy 189 In contrast to the male travellers who made no observations on the womenfolk other than to admire their beauty, Krishnabhabini carefully scrutinised the women she encountered in the foreign land and compared their situation with that of Bengali women. On encountering some women, both rich and poor, enjoying an afternoon in a park near San Marco’s square in Venice, Krishnabhabini was reminded of her Bengali sisters, constrained to a confined life within four walls, with no idea of the pleasure that freedom of movement could afford (Das 1885, 48). She wrote that Italian women had “a natural civility” and confidence born of freedom which was clearly visible in their faces (49) and that she longed to converse with them, to call them “Didi”, but could not do so since she did not know the language. Bijoy Chand Mahtab was particularly discerning about the contemporary politics and social situation of the country that he visited. Despite Italy being a fertile, well-cultivated country, the wages were poor and workingclass Italians migrated in large numbers every year to the United States of America, where they found labour to be more lucrative than at home (Mahtab 1908, 14). On the other hand, he was struck with the ease of public transportation and by the fact that even the smallest towns had electricity, evidence of the country’s modernity and progress (75). Unlike R.C. Dutt, the other travellers frequently discussed the Risorgimento and its impact. Mahtab specially mentioned the statues of the Risorgimento heroes and hailed the respect and veneration that was accorded to “the great patriot Garibaldi, the liberator of Austria-ridden Italy” (78). Recounting his conversation with an Italian man and his nephew in the train from Naples to Rome, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay wrote about their surprise on hearing a “Bengali sannyasi” talk knowledgeably about Pellico’s sufferings in prison (Upadhyay 1906, 7) and about contemporary Italian politics. Indeed, Upadhyay was the exceptional male visitor of this early phase who appeared to admire almost everything that he encountered in Italy. In his letters, he asserted, “To tell the truth, I really love this country Italy. The Italian language is very sweet. The Italian people are extremely courteous” (Ibid.). Having converted to Catholicism, he hailed Pope Leo XIII as the “greatest man of our times” (Tripathi 1967, 62). He also discussed the difficult situation experienced by Italians, devoted both to the Italian king and to the pope, due to the ongoing conflict between the two (Upadhyay 1906, 11–12). Mahtab, however, was deeply critical of the superstitious rituals and practices encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church. Rather than fostering education among the masses, we are told that priests in southern Italy encouraged their credulous flock to participate in street processions that were regularly organised to provide an income for the Church (Mahtab 1908, 27). This came as a shock to Mahtab as in India the Catholic Church

190  Sanjukta Das Gupta was reputed for its educational institutions. In Italy, on the other hand, the priests appeared to teach the people a form of idolatry no better than that of “the lower forms of Hinduism” (28). Although impressed with the “saintly simplicity” of Pope Pius X with whom he had an audience, he felt that the pope, a “prisoner of the Cardinals and Jesuits of the Vatican”, was not a happy man (41). Despite his critique of the Catholic Church, he was not anti-clerical and was disturbed by the atheistic sentiments and the rising wave of freemasonry and socialism in Italy (76–77). Among the narratives of the first phase, Trailokyanath Mukharji’s stands out the most because of the comparisons he made between Europe and England. While he truly appreciated the art of Florence and Rome, he was critical of what he felt were dishonourable political practices of the past. Among our travellers, he was the only one who, rather than extol the beauties of Venice, stringently critiqued the devious and ruthless means by which the Doges got rid of their political opponents (Mukharji 1889, 372). At the Colosseum, he imagined the thousands of lives being butchered there. The brutalities of the past prevailed over the beauty of the living scene so far as Trailakyanath was concerned. Expounding on the cruelties perpetrated by various Europe monarchies in the past, he passionately defended the British nation who he felt was much more humane in comparison: If England were not in India today, if we found ourselves drifting into the clutches of some unknown power of Europe as all non-European nations seem to be doing now, if choice were given to us to elect that power, we would be awfully stupid if we did not select England to be our chief. (82) In this early phase, the intended goal of the westward travels of the Bengali was, of course, Britain, while some ventured on a European tour out of a sense of curiosity and adventure. Although contemporary Italy was located in the outskirts of their imagined West, the Graeco-Roman civilisation was nonetheless significant as the original source of European modernity (Nandy 2010, viii). Their gaze, particularly Trailakyonath Mukharji’s, appears to be essentially derivative and complicit with the “disciplinary regimes” of imperialism (Mukhopadhyay 2002, 298). Even Bijoy Chand Mahtab, who, on the whole, presented a balanced view of his encounters, repeated several stereotypes popularised in English writings, for instance, in observations like, “Loafers abound in Italy, and in some places, particularly in the south, the men are proverbially lazy” (Mahtab 1908, 76). Recognised as a maharaja by the British, Mahtab enjoyed a high status in the post-1857 British nobility. That he felt akin to the British can be understood by his delight on meeting “some English people in a foreign land”

Travels in Italy 191 when invited to tea by the British Ambassador in Rome (44). However, the response of these travellers was varied and, in contrast to what Simonti Sen has suggested, they did not uniformly view Italy as a “primitive” within Europe (Sen 2005, 188). While much of their critique was a response to the newly unified country’s internal problems and the economic divide between the north and the south, there was also a deep appreciation of the country’s classical past. The second phase of travel writing: 1920s-30s A second phase of Bengali travellers’ encounter with Italy occurred in the 1920s and 1930s in the context of very different socio-political realities, both in Italy and in India. World War I marked a major transition in Italy’s political and economic development. The process of national reconstruction following the Risorgimento which had aimed at discarding its image as a backward country in an effort to catch up with western Europe gave a way to a more frenetic pace of modernity under the fascist government. The Italy which subsequent visitors encountered was therefore far removed from the Italy of the late 19th century. Thus, Bimal Mukherjee,15 who had undertaken a bicycle tour of the world between 1926 and 1937, found Italy of the 1930s to be an advanced, modern nation, and not the backwaters of the West. The roads, in particular, left him in no doubt that he had “reached a developed country in Europe” (Mukherjee 2006, 204). In India too, the anti-colonial struggle had transformed into a mass nationalist movement under the leadership of Gandhi with a clearly articulated demand for swaraj or Independence, replacing earlier calls for reforms and Dominion Status. The new generation of Bengali travellers were simultaneously more critical of Britain’s imperialism and more assertive about their own role as the future citizens of independent India, rather than as subjects of the British Empire. The travel writings during this phase reflect a continuity with the earlier trend of descriptions of and literary allusions to Italian art and historical sites, though perhaps in less details than earlier. The change lay in the deep engagement with contemporary Italian politics and reflections on the value of self-assertion under Mussolini. The rise of the fascist powers had seen the emergence of a new Italian policy towards India in the 1930s. Portraying Italy as a defender of the victims of Anglo-French greed (Casolari 2020, x) and aiming to promote a “universal fascism” among various intellectual and youth groups, the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) sought to establish direct contact with nationalist leaders in India. To cultivate interest in Italy among the Bengali youth, the fascist government instituted scholarships for Bengali students – an outcome of long discussions throughout the 1920s between intellectuals like Kalidas Nag, Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Carlo Formichi and Giuseppe

192  Sanjukta Das Gupta Tucci on the need to establish exchange programmes between Italian universities and Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan (Prayer 1994, 17–43; Prayer 1996, 56–104).16 The Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Ismeo), established in 1933, invited Indian students to study Italian language, helped them get admission to Italian universities and closely collaborated with organisations like the Hindustan Association and the India Bureau. On their return to India, scholarship students wrote articles on Italy for well-known periodicals, including Prabasi, Modern Review and India and the World.17 Kalidas Nag visited Italy several times in the 1920s and 1930s.18 The diaries which he maintained during his first two visits in 1921 and 1923 were later published as part of his memoirs. Nag’s trips coincided with the rise of the fascist movement, which he analysed at great length. On his first visit to Rome, he was invited by Professor Carlo Formichi and his sisters from whom he learned about contemporary Italian life and the “pre-Mussolini politics of Italy”. Formichi also introduced Nag to his colleagues, like the mathematician and sinologist Giovanni Vacca and the chemist Demetrio Helbig (Nag 1994, 178–79). Before his second trip to Italy in 1923, however, Nag spent ten days with Romain Rolland at his residence in Villeneuve. Rolland apprised him of the “growing thunderstorms in Germany, Italy and Spain” (114–15) and this perhaps induced him to take a more critical look at events unfolding in Italy. As he made his way from Florence to Rome, he observed with a hint of irony that “Tuscany, with her great sons like Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, Leonardo and others, was enjoying eternal sleep, while Mussolini and his fascist guards were shouting to wake up to a new Italy!” (116). He again met with Professors Formichi, Tucci, Helbig and Vacca, Count Cagnola and “others of the intellectual aristocracy” whom he found to be “still free from the virus of Fascism”. Collating his memoirs in later years, he added retrospectively that “soon the great philosopher Benedetto Croce will have to leave Rome for declaring himself anti-Fascist! The professors and scientists still whispered home-truths but would soon be captivated by Mussolini” (117). Arguing that the aim of building a world government had been scuttled by England and France, who used the League Council “for whitewashing their deeds as colonizing and imperial powers” (128), Nag held the League of Nations responsible for the rise of nazism and fascism in Europe. When he left Europe in 1923, there was still formal peace, but the signs of a future conflict were evident. With the assumption of dictatorial powers by Mussolini, Nag became all too aware of the “new atmosphere charged with good and bad portents”. On the one hand, he detected a “new surge of life” and “constructive zeal, as against the sloth and separatist tendencies of previous years” and remarked that Italians were proud of their new leader, the son of a village blacksmith who could become the first consul of

Travels in Italy 193 the state (129). The flip side was that pacifism was openly ridiculed and violence extolled as a virtue. This belligerence of the youth group and their institutions, according to Nag, then spread from Italy to Germany, the cradle of nazism. “The docile, artistic, musical and carefree Italians” suddenly began to “bluster as the grandchildren of Julius Caesar”, with Mussolini playing “the role of a Roman Emperor, with dominions over Africa and Asia minor” and the fanning of nationalist pride by the poet and novelist Gabriele D’Annunzio (128). Fascism was reported to have saved Italy from Communist chaos, but “violence and murder, open and secret, came to be the order of the day” (117). One finds the same ambivalence regarding Mussolini and the fascists reflected in the writings of Bimal Mukherjee almost a decade later. On the one hand, he was fascinated by the public discipline which he witnessed: “The roads are clean. The trains run on time, and the factories work full time. Everyone is spellbound by such achievements of Mussolini’s. At that time, even I” (Mukherjee 2006, 208). On several occasions, he went to listen to Mussolini’s speeches, once on the birth anniversary of Julius Caesar at the via dell’Imperio (via dei Fori Imperiali today), which he reported thus: In honouring Caesar, we are honouring ourselves, because we are the descendants of that great man. We are also Roman, of the present day. In those days Rome had an enormous empire stretching from Turkey to England. But what do we have? Nothing! England and France conspired to divide the world among themselves. Our duty is to conquer Abyssinia and resolve the lack of living space of my people. (207) Elsewhere Mukherjee wryly observed that “merely shouting and writing that the sea is ours, will not bring the control over the Mediterranean in Italy’s hands”. Despite his admiration for Mussolini, he was clearly alive to the fact that these speeches were intended to build up public opinion in favour of the conquest of Abyssinia – which Mussolini was determined to achieve either through his “fatwa” (decree) or through “hooliganism” (208). It was Benoy Sarkar19 who provided insights into the functioning of fascist youth groups in the account of his travels in Trentino which had only recently been incorporated within Italy after years of Austrian occupation. Eager to Italianise the region, the government regularly organised nationalist parades and festivals to commemorate its “liberation” by the victorious Italian army during World War I. The black-shirted fascist youth played a leading part both in organising the festivities and in ensuring compliance (Sarkar 1926, 580). The youth cult in contemporary Europe was not, however, appreciated by all, and Sarkar remarked on the disenchantment expressed by a German woman who believed that it only

194  Sanjukta Das Gupta encouraged charlatans and vagabonds. Sarkar also wrote about the language politics in the region and the discrimination faced by the Germanspeaking populace: Should any German man or women greet an Italian with a guten Tag rather than buon giorno, their family faced the threat of being evicted from their home. There has been a lot of violence, bloodshed and plunder. This was a novel sight for a child of India, but the “experienced” slave can understand the life-story of the newly enslaved without the need of words. (Ibid.) With the enslavement of “three hundred thousand pure Germans”, Trentino, which had earlier been the site of Italian irredentism, had been transformed into that of Austrian irredentism (584). Together with their observations on European politics, the travellers of this period also took any opportunity to talk about and inform the Italian public about the leading literary and nationalist figures of the time. Thus, Kalidas Nag claimed that it was he who introduced Formichi to the works of Tagore, while Bimal Mukherjee, an ardent nationalist and follower of Gandhi, took up any opportunity to give talks on India’s freedom movement. The latter was invited by Mr Bertolini of Padua University to deliver two speeches on Rabindranath and Santiniketan and Gandhiji and the Freedom Struggle. When questioned if Gandhi was a politician or a sage, he explained not only that Gandhi attempted to induct probity in politics but also that he had a sage-like personality. Mukherjee viewed Gandhi as a crusader against the inequities of the caste system who had taken up the cause of the marginalised and oppressed, forgetting his own creature comforts. (Mukherjee 2006, 212). Durgabati Ghose,20 who toured Italy in 1932, wrote that on various occasions, she and her husband were questioned by Italians on Gandhi, who had recently visited Italy in 1931 and who was on a hunger strike at the time (Ghose 2010, 78, 79, 87). The memoirs and travelogues written by Kalidas Nag, Benoy Sarkar and Bimal Mukherjee also reflect the new self-confidence of Indians in their dealings with Italians. Together with descriptions of the art and architectural wealth of Venice, Milan, Verona, Florence, Rome and Naples – for instance, the Duomo at Milan, the “petrified music of architectural marvel” and the “historic bridge” on the river Arno where Dante met Beatrice (Nag 1991, 176, 178) – they also began to explore sites which took them beyond the usual tourist map of travelling Indians. Thus, Benoy Sarkar, desiring to view the mountains, undertook a trip in the Trentino region (Sarkar 1926, 577) while Bimal Mukherjee’s sojourn in Italy stands out for the vast number of cities that he had visited – he was perhaps the only

Travels in Italy 195 Indian of the time to have made an extensive tour of Sicily which included places such as Catania, Syracuse, the Etna, Enna, Agrigento and Palermo. Moreover, they were not mere tourists with no foothold in the country. Instead, they interacted with a vast range of people who informed their opinions and understandings of contemporary Italy. While Kalidas Nag largely relied upon the academic community, he also reached out and received help of other illustrious locals, for instance, a group of opera singers on the train from Milan who gave him “valuable hints regarding Italian opera and the music of Verdi, Toscanini and others” (Nag 1921, 177). With his remarkable people skills, Bimal Mukherjee could cut across class prejudice, thereby receiving the help of a diverse cross-section of people. They included the exiled king of Spain Alfonso III, who kindly took him on a tour of Spanish architecture in Syracuse (Mukherjee 2006, 208), and the caretaker of Villa Farnesina whom he charmed into opening the palace so that as a visitor from far-off India, he could see the frescoes of Raphael (210). Benoy Sarkar was similarly befriended by several local peasant families in Trentino who offered him food and lodging and gave him insights into local politics. Durgabati Ghose, on the other hand, was uncomfortable with the attention she received because of her attire, the sari. At Genoa, she and her husband were shown around by Kalidas Nag’s student, Birendra Chandra Singha,21 who took them to his boarding house where the ladies “flocked together” to see her. “Some admired my sari, others my bangles, and even the dot of sindoor on my forehead” (Ghose 2010, 22). She was, however, sharply critical of a similar response on the part of working-class women. Their hotel in Naples overlooked a slum where people spent their entire day washing clothes, carrying water, beating their children, washing their utensils and spreading out their laundry to dry. A young girl of about eighteen or nineteen saw me observing all these activities from the window and started shouting “Indiano”! Instantly hordes of old and young people came out to watch the fun. (97) Interpreting the gestures of two young girls as “indecent” and “obscene”, she angrily remarked, “I kept on thinking why such grown-up girls were so uncouth. At their age, girls in our country would already become housewives and rear children” (98). Unlike Krishnabhabini, she did not harbour any sense of sisterhood with Italian women, and unlike Bimal Mukherjee, she could not cut across class barriers and relate to the working-class women slum-dwellers. That these travellers were well-acquainted with the politics and culture of contemporary Italy is forcefully demonstrated in the writings of

196  Sanjukta Das Gupta Monindra Mohan Moulik,22 who was one of the brightest students to participate in the student exchange programme. Moulik did not write a traditional travelogue, but published memoirs in the form of poetry, which included musings on his life in Italy. He also published a series of articles on socio-economic developments and literature in contemporary Italy in newspapers and journals like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Modern Review and Calcutta Review, which he later compiled in the form of a monograph. These included his analyses not only of aspects of Italian history and traditions, such as the Risorgimento and discussions on myths, local legends and customs, but also of the Italian economy of the time. His articles on Italian literature and literary figures intended to introduce the Indian reading public to personalities like D’Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Grazia Deledda and Gabriele Carducci and provided an overview of their life and works. Moulik had the opportunity to interview Pirandello on 13 March 1936 in which the latter emphatically asserted that justice had not been done at Versailles to nations like Germany and Italy (Moulik 1940, 97). On being questioned on the propaganda value of literature, Pirandello stated that when literature was placed at the service of politics it was no longer capable of creating art. To another question on dictators, Pirandello’s reply was that dictators could not only rule by force; they had to respond to the ideals and sentiments of the people (106). Moulik detected in Pirandello an internationalism that was fundamentally akin to Tagore’s: Both Pirandello and Tagore uphold some universal principles and ideas that transcend the limits of national boundaries through their literature, but both of them have a linguistic style which is characteristically provincial and even regional. Tagore’s form of expression is as much Bengalee as Pirandello’s is Italian. (99) To this Pirandello’s reply was, “As Pirandello’s is Sicilian”. Moulik had also attempted to secure an interview with Grazia Deledda in 1936, but she was ill at the time and died shortly afterwards. However, he did strike up a friendship with Deledda’s son Sardus Madesani and on his invitation visited their house in Rome. This intimacy enabled Moulik to appreciate the role of domestic environment in Deledda’s works, about which he wrote: When I  came out of that villa I  had the impression of having had an interview with Deledda’s spirit that still hovered around her son’s devotion, much more elaborate and comprehensive than I could ever expect if I had to meet her in person. (121)

Travels in Italy 197 Through contemporary literature, the visitors of the second period derived insights which complemented the political inputs they received and also illustrated their own multi-faceted approach to Italy of their times. Conclusion Bengali response to Italy was therefore largely an outcome of their lived experience in India and of their political beliefs. In the first phase, the travellers were primarily tourists, with little actual connection to the local society. They were guided in their appreciation of the wonders of Italy’s classical past primarily through the English literature of the times, but also by their search for alternate political ideologies to combat British supremacy. With the British Empire as their reference point, some of the narratives of this period ranked Italy lower in the contemporary hierarchy of nations, while appreciating its cultural heritage. Others looked at the nationalist discourse of the Risorgimento as a model for Indian independence. Much of their reception of the new sights and experiences was in a comparative perspective, as if filling up empty spaces or lacunae in their view of the world. In the second phase, the travel writers were not mere passers-by but inside-outsiders, deeply invested in the political fortunes of their host country. With anti-colonialism informing their engagement with Italy, they sought out new geographies of possibilities which would enable Indians to break through the stranglehold of imperial boundaries. Primarily attracted by the national self-assertion and the new public energy under Mussolini, these visitors collaborated with the fascist regime for the gains they imagined it proffered in their anti-imperialist struggle. At the same time, rather than professing an ideological commitment to dictatorship, they retained their independence, expressing their liberal critique in their travel writings. The self-confidence of this new generation of travellers is also seen in the descriptions of the landscape. Benoy Sarkar’s description of the hills of Trentino, for instance, marks the opening up of an independent channel of conversation between Bengal and non-British parts of the world, where the Bengali traveller looked at the world independently, not through the lens of the empire. By establishing India as an observer and interlocutor of the Italian landscape, Sarkar thus laid the groundwork for the new Indian internationalism. Notes 1 Unless otherwise mentioned, all translations from Bengali are the author’s. Surendranath Banerjea recalled that his family was practically outcasted by the conservative Hindu society following his return to India from Europe (Banerjea 1925, 24–25). See Arp 2004 for a nuanced analysis of the debates on sea voyage in 19th-century Bengal.

198  Sanjukta Das Gupta 2 The teenaged Krishnabhabini went on an extended trip to England with her husband, Debendranath Das in 1882. Published in 1885, her travel account Inglande Banga Mahila (A Bengali Women in England) made a comparative study of the status of women in England and in Bengal. 3 A much-cited example is that of Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who in his first trip to Europe could identify, solely on the basis of his “map-knowledge”, all the important landmarks as his airplane flew over Rome (Chaudhuri 1910, 12–13). 4 Feiwel Kupferberg (1998), for instance, differentiates between the creativity of migrants, strangers and travellers. 5 See, for instance, Indira Debi Chaudhurani’s article entitled “Gris o Rom” (Greece and Rome) in Sabuj Patra, 1325 B.S. [1918], which was a translation of the first chapter of the French historian Ernest Lavisse’s Vue Générale de l’Histoire Politique de l’Europe (1891). 6 It was first published in 1822 by the missionaries W.H. Pearce and John Lawson. 7 When living in Versailles, he sent his sonnet commemorating Dante’s quincentenary to the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II who acknowledged it with gratitude (Murshid 2003, 179). 8 For details regarding Dante’s influence on Dutt and other 19th-century Bengali poets, see Sukanta Chaudhuri’s chapter in this volume. Also see Schildgen 2012. 9 Later works included Karuchandra Ghosh’s Mazzini (1923), Jogendranath Gupta’s Mazzini (1929), and Sanjiv Chandra Lahiri’s Mazzini O Manav Kartavya (1924), a translation of The Duties of Man. 10 Mukharji undertook an Italian trip in 1886 when he was deputed by the British government in India to attend the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. 11 From Rabindranath’s letter to Satyendranath, first published in Bharati in 1879, and later included in Yurop-prabasir Patra (1936). Translated from Bengali by Mario Prayer. 12 A theologian and journalist, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay travelled to Europe and England in 1902–03. The letters that he wrote from Europe for the periodical Bangabasi were reprinted in 1906 as Bilatjatri Sannyasir Chithi (Letters of a Monk’s Voyage to England). Born as Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay in a Brahmin family, he converted to Christianity in 1891 and adopted the name Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. Adopting saffron robes, he called himself a Christian sannyasi. 13 This was because female tourists at the time were not permitted to view the brothel in Pompeii and the Secret Museum in Naples. 14 The wife of the famous scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, Abala Bose was an educationist and reformer. She travelled extensively with her husband in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and wrote accounts of Pompeii, Vesuvius and Venice, which were published in Mukul, a periodical for children. 15 In December 1926, Mukherjee together with three other friends, the brothers Ashok and Ananda Mukherjee and Manindra Ghosh, embarked on a bicycle tour of the world – perhaps one of the first instances of Indians undertaking adventure travels. The trip which lasted for eleven years saw him travel across the Arabian desert, Turkey, Europe and the Americas, Tahiti, Japan and South-East Asia. While his companions gave up the voyage midway, Mukherjee continued on his own, financing his trip in various ways – as a photographer, a seaman, through lectures and lessons in schools and universities, in a fishing trawler and in a dairy farm – when promised funds from the Globe-Trotting Committee failed to arrive. For details regarding “adventure tourism” undertaken by Indians in colonial times, and the preparations for Mukherjee’s bicycle tour, see Chakrabarti 2022.

Travels in Italy 199 16 See chapters by Mario Prayer and Marzia Casolari in this volume for further details. 17 For instance, one of the first scholarship-holders, Pramatha Nath Roy, translated Paolo Orano’s biography of Mussolini into Bengali in 1929 and also wrote a book Mussolini and the Cult of Italian Youth in 1932. Regular columns on events in Italy were published in the Modern Review and in the Bengali journal Prabasi in the 1920s and 1930s. 18 In 1930 and 1931, he visited Perugia as India’s representative on the Board of its University for Foreigners. 19 For details regarding Benoy Kumar Sarkar’s political philosophy and an account of his years in Italy, see Flora 1994; Prayer 1996; Sen 2015. In this article, I shall limit myself to an analysis of his travel writings. 20 The daughter of the Bengali psychoanalyst Girindra Sekhar Bose, Durgabati accompanied her husband Rabindra Chandra Ghose in a four-month long trip to Europe. Her travel account Paschimjatriki was published serially in Prabasi in seven instalments in 1935 and as a book in 1936. 21 They met other Bengali students like Dhirendranath Das who was training to be a pilot in Rome. In Genoa, they met Enrico Firpo, the younger brother of Angelo Firpo, the partner of Firpo’s restaurant in Calcutta, with whom the couple were previously acquainted. 22 Moulik first went to Italy in 1935 with the help of Benoy Sarkar and received his doctorate from the University of Rome in 1938. Fluent in Italian, he wrote books on Indian nationalism and culture, such as Il fondamento ideale del nazionalismo indiano (1936) and Lo spirito dell’amore nella letteratura indiana (1937) published by Ismeo.

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200  Sanjukta Das Gupta Chatterjee, Partha. 1998. “Five Hundred Years of Fear and Love.” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 22: 1330–36. Chaudhuri, Nirad C. 1910. A Passage to England. London: Macmillan. Das, Krishnabhabini. 1885. Inglande Bangamahila. Calcutta: Banerjee Press. Dutt, Michael Madhusudan. 1955. Madhusudan Rachanavali. Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad. Dutt, R. C. 1896. Three Years in Europe, 1868–1871: With an Account of Subsequent Visits in 1886 and 1893. Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri. Dutta, Sutapa. 2021. Disciplined Subjects: Schooling in Colonial Bengal. London and New York: Routledge. Flora, Giuseppe. 1994. Benoy Kumar Sarkar and Italy. New Delhi: Italian Embassy Cultural Centre. Ghose, Durgabati. 2010 (reprint). Paschimjatriki. Translated by Somdatta Mandal. Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Jones, William. 1784. “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India.” Asiatick Researches or Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal 1: 221–75. Kupferberg, Feiwel. 1998. “Models of Creativity Abroad: Migrants, Strangers and Travellers.” European Journal of Sociology 39, no. 1: 179–206. Mahtab, Bijoy Chand. 1908. Impressions: The Diary of a European Tour. London: St. Catherine Press. Metcalf, Thomas R. 1998. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moulik, Monindra Mohan. 1940. Italian Economy and Culture: A Study in Social Transformations. Calcutta: Chuckervertty, Chatterjee & Co. ———. 1979. An Endless Feast. Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop. Mukharji, T. N. 1889. A Visit to Europe. Calcutta: W. Newman. Mukherjee, Alok K. 2009. This Gift of English: English Education and the Formation of Alternative Hegemonies in India. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Mukherjee, Bimal. 2006 (reprint). Duchakay Duniya. Kolkata: Swarnakshar Prakashani. Mukhopadhyay, Bhaskar. 2002. “Writing Home, Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of Dwelling in Bengali Modernity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, no. 2: 293–318. Murshid, Ghulam. 2003. Lured by Hope: A Biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nag, Kalidas. 1991. Memoirs. Vol. 1, 1881–1921. Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop. ———. 1994. Memoirs. Vol. 2, 1921–23: European Reminiscences. Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop. Nandy, Ashis. 2010. “The Empire Thinks Back. A  Foreword.” In Ghose 2010, vii–xiii. Pal, Bipin Chandra. 1932. Memories of My Life and Times. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Modern Book. Prayer, Mario. 1994. In Search of an Entente: India and Italy From the 19th to 20th Century. A Survey. New Delhi: Italian Embassy Cultural Centre. ———. 1996. Internazionalismo e nazionalismo culturale. Gli intellettuali bengalesi e l’Italia negli anni Venti e Trenta. Roma: Bardi.

Travels in Italy 201 Sarkar, Benoy. 1926 (1333 B.S.). “Trentinoy Pahar Dekha.” Prabasi 26, no. 1(4): 577–87. Sen, Satadru. 2015. Benoy Kumar Sarkar: Restoring the Nation to the World. London: Routledge. Sen, Simonti. 2005. Travels to Europe: Self and Other in Bengali Travel Narratives 1870–1910. New Delhi: Orient Longmans. Schildgen, Brenda Deen. 2012. “Dante and the Bengali Renaissance.” In Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and Appropriation, edited by A. Audeh and N. Havely, 223–338. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1925. “The Voice of Humanity.” Visva-Bharati Quarterly 3, no. 1: 1–10. ———. 1936. Yurop-prabasir Patra. Kolkata: Visva-Bharati Granthan Bibhag. Tripathi, Amales. 1967. The Extremist Challenge: India Between 1890 and 1910. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Upadhyay, Brahmabandhab. 1906. Bilatjatri Sannyasir Chithi. Calcutta: Samajpati & Basu. Viswanathan, Gauri. 1989. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

10 Emissaries of Swadeshi Bengali Internationalists in Inter-war Italy Mario Prayer

Several distinguished Bengali intellectuals visited Italy in the inter-war period as part of their activities aimed at promoting India’s subjectivity on the international stage. In their engagement with cultural and political life in the Old Continent, they acted as representatives of India’s aspirations on the international scene, as well as of the specific region to which they belonged, Bengal. In Italy, they met prominent scholars and thinkers, interacted with government circles and won their support for a series of joint initiatives in various fields. This chapter will identify the unique features that made this phase of the Bengal-Italy dialogue significant for both sides by exploring the landscape of ideas and aspirations which informed the cultural projects Bengali intellectuals had embarked on, as well as the aims and means of Italy’s support to such projects. The fundamental assumption of the study is that these projects largely reflected the experiences of Bengal’s Swadeshi movement at the beginning of the 20th century. The lasting impact of Swadeshi after World War I has been recently highlighted in recent historiographic works on Indian internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Kris Manjapra has argued that Swadeshi nationalism was most productive not in the social, economic or political spheres, but rather in travel and interconnectedness, where projects of educational acquisition for national purposes as well as knowledge affiliations beyond the British Empire played a central role (Manjapra 2012). Maria Framke has further pointed out that new dimensions emerged when political and ideological developments in contemporary Europe provided Indian intellectuals and activists with useful study material in their search for a vision of India’s future nation-state. Despite their ambivalent response to fascism and nazism in the aftermath of World War I, their direct exposure to and personal engagement with Italy and Germany represented a fundamental experience in the articulation of the Indian nationalist discourse (Framke 2016). In this respect, one should also refer to Mark R. Frost’s observation that the post-war development of cosmopolitan attitudes in South Asia was rooted in the specific regional DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-14

Emissaries of Swadeshi 203 historic circumstances and should not be considered first and foremost as a consequence of Western influences (Frost 2012). These arguments may contribute to a useful interpretive model especially when taken together. The regional, the national and the international need not be seen as antithetical dimensions; in fact, they constituted a continuum, a space for possibilities. As the present case study will show, both local and supralocal sources of inspiration were clearly discernible in Swadeshi-inspired plans for education and intellectual dialogue during the 1920s and 1930s. While the interaction within a universal dimension of knowledge had been an ideal Leitmotiv throughout the 19th century in Bengal, it found a congenial atmosphere in the inter-war period as new viable channels of educational and cultural exchange could be established across continents. In different capacities and through various means, influential representatives of the regional intellectual scene got engaged in a shared effort to overcome the material and conceptual boundaries of colonial subjugation and found in Italy a pool of willing partners, ready to second their programmes as part of their own international agenda. Nationalism and internationalism were to them complementary dimensions whose interplay resulted in a variety of individual solutions combining culture and politics. After some brief remarks on the nature and circumstances of the Swadeshi international outlook, the chapter presents two sections dealing with the educational and intellectual ventures which characterized the Bengal-Italy dialogue. The contributions of prominent figures like the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the scholar-educationist Kalidas Nag, the social scientist Benoy Kumar Sarkar the philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta and others will show how closely interconnected and interdependent both fields of engagement were for them. From regional to international: the Swadeshi outlook The principles and perspectives at play in the foreign engagement of Bengali intellectuals during this period formed a set of interwoven regional, national and international concerns variously related to the twin concepts of atmashakti and vishvashakti, the well-known terms introduced by Rabindranath Tagore and Benoy Kumar Sarkar, respectively.1 Atmashakti points to the need for a renewed awareness and material recovery of the creative forces that had shaped India’s historical identity before colonial intervention, whereas vishvashakti represents a global domain of interactive transformation providing opportunities for political and economic development to those endowed with awareness and capability. Both these concerns can be seen as characterizing Swadeshi culture and its aftermath in the early decades of the 20th century. Sumit Sarkar in his

204  Mario Prayer foundational study of the Swadeshi movement of 1903–1908 has dwelt at length on the “Gospel” of atmashakti and the centrality of national education within projects of nation-building. According to Sarkar, the “new trends” after 1903 promoted the recovery of self-strength “through constructive economic and educational work – swadeshi and national education”. These ideas found an expression in Rabindranath Tagore’s address on Swadeshi samaj (1904) and inspired several volunteer organizations in subsequent years (Sarkar 1973, 47–53). The national education movement became part of the Swadeshi industrial revitalization project when proposals were made to raise financial support for students receiving technical training in Japan, the US, Britain and France. The development of technical knowledge for industrial purposes helped by other countries marked a new beginning in the context of a long-standing call for the development of technical education in Bengal dating back to the mid-1880s (111–15, 124). There was thus a considerable area of coexistence between atmashakti and vishvashakti. These were, so to say, the warp and weft of Bengali internationalism as it was moulded in the Swadeshi years. The “shift to terrorism” from 1908 onward also saw the involvement of foreign countries like Germany and Japan, which provided assistance to Bengali biplabis’ plans of army infiltration and the acquisition of weapons for assassinations and raids (75–76). This politicization of foreign links happened while other attempts at armed rebellion, for instance through the Ghadar Party, were establishing international connections in the US and in Europe. In many ways, therefore, the Swadeshi movement promoted both the idea of national self-reliance and an interaction with world movements. Building up the country’s inner strength found a necessary counterpart in the reaffirmation of its prominence on the international scene. After World War I, state borders generally became more guarded and international travelling more restricted and regulated, but this did not halt the long-distance circulation of ideas and knowledge which, in fact, benefitted from technical advance. The decline in the participation of the Indian, and generally the Asian youth in the pre-war kind of global networks for armed rebellion was paralleled by a surge in the demand for foreign help for educational purposes, particularly towards non-imperialist countries. Elite families in China, India, Iraq or elsewhere in Asia tried to secure formative experiences abroad in economics, political science and engineering which their children were missing at home. The strengthening of state domestic structures across the world, and even the rise of totalitarian regimes, created conditions for such a demand to be met through more or less systematic channels under government patronage. This required patriots in colonized countries to acquire a new awareness of opportunities offered by “world forces” particularly in the eventful

Emissaries of Swadeshi 205 decades after the war. In continental Europe, while Germany and France, the most advanced countries of the time, played a leading role in offering training and education to students from various Asian countries, including India, Italy too was able to carve out a role for itself in this regard in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The cooperation offered by these friendly foreign governments found in Bengal a vocal, self-confident group of scholarspatriots ready to intercept them. The attitude of Bengali internationalists towards European state partners was generally free from commitment to any particular ideology. India had a political situation of its own which did not match the orientations prevailing in Europe. In this sense, the Swadeshi dimension of international cooperation eluded the right and the left as oppositional categories of Western political dialectics. Appreciation of and sympathy for other countries, and even participation in some of their national propaganda initiatives, did not necessarily entail an ideological stance, but was often an acknowledgement of their support to India’s cause. Moreover, internationally rising countries like Italy or Germany might play a crucial role as external supporters of India’s freedom fighters in their challenge to the British Empire and the established world order. For these reasons, collaboration with anti-democratic or militaristic governments did not preclude the involvement in movements for the recognition of universal rights and for international peace. There was thus a distinct political dimension in the activities of Bengali internationalists appearing on various international fora to promote the advancement of their country. The large-scale destruction and suffering caused by World War I had ignited waves of turmoil resulting in the moral and political indictment of established powers and élites governing the world. Across the very national borders around which the conflict had raged, movements for discontinuity and change got momentum and organized themselves through a variety of platforms in support of working classes against exploitation, of women against patriarchy, of coloured communities against racial discrimination, of pacifism against military power, and of colonized countries against imperialism. The rise of India as an international subject in its own right had a marked impact on these platforms. This explains the convergence around India of movements for a new free and equal world and social order, as well as the interest in India of newly ambitious countries, from Germany to Russia to Italy, as they hoped to undermine the entrenched dominance of imperial powers not through open confrontation but, so to say, indirectly. In this global atmosphere of unrest, Bengali emissaries of Swadeshi found a most congenial terrain for their educational and intellectual ventures in Europe.

206  Mario Prayer Education: nurturing Indian students While Germany and France had already developed a policy for Asian students in the early years after the Great War, Italy had so far looked at India mostly from the perspective of improving economic relations with the British empire. Mussolini’s capture of power by violent and anti-democratic means was harshly condemned in various circles in Europe, including within those anti-imperialist and pacifist movements where India’s aspirations had received sympathy and support. The need to neutralize antifascist sentiments and acquire leverage in international relations initially induced the Italian government to adopt a policy of caution towards Britain and France, which also delayed the formulation of a comprehensive plan for the expansion of Italian interests in strategically crucial areas such as India. The latter, after an initial phase of individual ad hoc measures in the 1920s, took on a more systematic nature only in the early 1930s.2 The beginnings of Indo-Italian educational cooperation in the inter-war period pre-dated the rise of fascism and were mostly owed to the initiatives taken by a young Bengali scholar, Kalidas Nag, who had moved to France in 1920 to study Kautilya’s Arthashastra under Sylvain Lévi and Jules Bloch.3 Nag, a close collaborator of Rabindranath Tagore, shared his belief in the mutually enriching dialogue between civilizations as an instrument for universal peace and progress. A  true embodiment of Swadeshi Bengali internationalism, he devoted his activities to the twin aims of India’s national advance through international recognition and the promotion of Tagore’s ideas and educational projects. While in Europe, Nag strove to build up a network of indologists who were keen to establish cooperation links between their universities and Rabindranath Tagore’s recently inaugurated Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan. To this aim, he also sought the support of various governments, including Italy where he got in touch with two prominent indologists of Rome’s Sapienza University, Carlo Formichi and Giuseppe Tucci (Prayer 1996, 17–19).4 Formichi soon visualized the advantages a tie-up with Tagore’s institution would bring to Indian studies in Italy. His efforts eventually resulted in his own deputation to Santiniketan as a visiting professor between September  1925 and March  1926, accompanied by Tucci who would teach Italian there for a year, and in Tagore’s visit to Italy as a state guest in May-June 1926.5 Tagore was delighted with these developments and on 10 March sent Mussolini “a message of deep and cordial appreciation of what Italy has contributed to the growth of Visva-Bharati” resulting in “lasting bonds of co-operation” and “the creation of intimate links of friendship”.6 Education was prominent during Tagore’s visits to Italy. In 1925, Tagore’s “experiment” in “his school” was highlighted in Italy’s newspapers.

Emissaries of Swadeshi 207 Meetings with schoolchildren were arranged in Milan and Venice, and Formichi’s students at the Oriental department of Rome University sent him a telegram of farewell on behalf of the “Italian youth” (Kundu 2009, 92). During his visit in 1926, several education-related events were organized: an official reception at Sapienza University hosted by the Vice-Chancellor Giorgio Del Vecchio and a large delegation of faculty, the annual meeting of Rome schools in the Colosseum, a visit to the Orti di Pace school for war orphans, a lecture by P.C. Mahalanobis on the ideals and aims of Visva-Bharati University, a private visit of “a hundred of Rome’s students” (254) to his hotel requesting as many autographs for their university cards, a tour to the Castelli Romani hills with a stop at the Naturasana centre for nature-based therapy, a conference at Florence University, another reception at Turin University and a conference at Turin’s Music High School. The Italians acknowledged Tagore not only as a poet whom the public had fondly admired for more than ten years after the first Italian version of Gitanjali in 1914 but also as an innovative educator, and at the same time, showcased their own educational experiments on similar lines. Towards the end of Tagore’s 1926 visit, Formichi was happy to announce the creation by the Italian foreign ministry of “scholarships for young Indians willing to study in our country” and the contribution offered by Italian navigation companies in order to “facilitate their travels”. A few days later, Formichi informed Tagore that “a Committee has already been appointed to found an Italian Visva-Bharati here and to start a work by which students of the two countries will largely profit” (Prayer 1996, 20). The scheme, however, had to be abandoned as a result of the well-known controversy which broke out after Tagore left Italy. Tucci also left Santiniketan in September 1926. Despite the embitterment vented out in a letter to a friend (Prayer 1996, 34–38), however, Tucci did not abandon his mission in Bengal. To begin with, he managed to be transferred to Dacca University, where he introduced post-graduate courses in Italian language and culture. Over the following four years, he remained in touch with Kalidas Nag and other Bengali colleagues and tried to keep the dialogue alive (60). This initially proved a hard task as Italian government circles, especially those in the foreign ministry, were now disinclined to cooperate. Things started to change by the end of the 1920s. A scholar with a pronounced managerial attitude, Tucci realized in those years that educational and cultural relations between India and Italy had to be entirely reorganized. Petitioning officers in the Italian government in order to help individual students to access Italian educational institutes, as Formichi had been doing earlier, would only produce limited results. Rather, it was necessary to make Indian studies and student exchanges part of an articulate and well-funded organizational set up aimed at producing a nationally coordinated effort. Italy would thus acquire visibility, improve its international

208  Mario Prayer prestige and further its economic and political interests by challenging German and French competition. This grand plan required political support at the highest level, which Tucci managed to elicit thanks to his personal access to very influent figures, like the philosopher and former minister of education, Senator Giovanni Gentile, and later Mussolini himself. Tucci’s new proposals were favourably received in government quarters in a period when the regime had acquired internal stability and inaugurated a series of political initiatives aimed at improving its international status. A new assertive policy for Italy in the relations with Mediterranean Africa and Asia was thus elaborated in the early 1930s. In an address to the Second Quinquennial Regime Assembly held in March  1931, Mussolini stated that “Italy’s historical objectives have two names – Asia and Africa. South and East are the cardinal points that must excite the Italians’ interest and will” (cit. in Prayer 1991, 260). Looking ahead to a future where the Britain Empire would finally collapse, Italy had to start preparing for filling up the political vacuum this would create. As an initial step, there was an attempt at harnessing the movement of Asiatic students in Europe to Italy’s interests by providing material support to the Confederation of Oriental Students (COS) as well as to various national student federations participating in it. The first annual meeting of the COS, as reported in its journal Jeune Asie/Young Asia, was held in Rome in December 1933 and attended by around six hundred students belonging to various countries from Palestine to Japan. The Federation of Indian and Cingalese Students (FICS) met shortly afterwards and was addressed among others by the nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose who was then visiting Italy (Prayer 1991, 261). As a youth leader of the Bengal Congress in the 1920s, Bose had taken a keen interest in the international dimension of India’s freedom struggle and considered Kalidas Nag’s activities as parallel to his own in this regard. He had written to Nag in 1926 to express “full sympathy” for his Greater India Society initiative. A few years later, he wrote to Nag: I have always been interested in your attempts to open up international contacts between India and other countries. I do not know how far you have been able to rouse public sympathy for this work. As you may have noticed in the [Indian] papers, I have been making a similar attempt. On my return home I intend taking practical steps in this direction.7 In 1934, Bose’s close associate Amiya Chakravarti became the FICS president and, in that capacity, favoured the transfer of the association headquarters from Vienna to Rome.8 These events were aptly organized in parallel with the official inauguration of Ismeo, the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East which

Emissaries of Swadeshi 209 would play the general coordinating role that Tucci had envisaged (Ferretti 1986).9 In the following years, Ismeo would be at the centre of a network of agencies joining hands in the management of scholarships and other forms of support offered to Indian students. These included the Inter-University Institute, the universities of Rome, Naples, Perugia, technical institutes, medical research centres like the Mussolini Institute for Tuberculosis, as well as private firms and industries (Prayer 1996, 63). A relevant part of Tucci’s scheme was entrusted to Indian collaborators, who were almost exclusively Bengalis. Their role would entail the dissemination in Bengal of information related to study opportunities in Italy as well as to contemporary Italy, its cultural life, economy and history and present state form under fascism. They would help in selecting candidates for scholarships and assist them in the organization of their travels to Italy. In these endeavours, they would work together with the Italian consulate general in Calcutta. They would also occasionally address Italian official circles in support of the whole project. Bengali internationalists accepted to work out this plan as its ultimate objectives largely corresponded with their own. We thus find Kalidas Nag writing to high officers in Italian ministries expressing gratefulness for the Italian government’s support. To E. Pagliano, he wrote in 1931: Much esteemed Count Pagliano, ever since my return from your hospitable shores of Italy to my homeland in India, I was busy organizing the work of Cultural Exchange that I had the honour of discussing with you in that memorable family dinner. . . . Thus the work of cultural collaboration between India and Italy has been started and I look forward eagerly to the prospect of receiving regular advice and support from your noble self as well as from Count Balsamo, Cav. Pervan and other friend[s] and supporters of our scheme. The first batch of students whom I had the privilege to take with me to Italy last year are writing to me in glowing terms, ever grateful to their Italian masters and to their Italian friends who are showing uniform courtesy and kindness to them. . . . I hope to send some of the finest specimens of Indian youths every year to Italy, provided I get sufficient help from your Department of National Education and Industries. . . . Young India is eager to get necessary technical training from Italy for which they have profound respect and sympathy.10 In a similar vein, in 1933, Pramatha Nath Roy wrote a long letter to Mussolini, in Italian, on behalf of the Hindustan Association in Italy. Introducing himself as “an oriental admirer of Your personality and activities”, Roy requested the Italian government to increase its support to Indian students seeking technical training in Italy which would result in “the creation of a

210  Mario Prayer small nucleus” of Italy’s friends in India working to “propagate Italian culture” and “promoting commercial relations” between the two countries.11 Such expressions of goodwill proved the effectiveness of Tucci’s system from the Italian point of view. As part of that framework, prominent figures of Bengal’s cultural and political life were harnessed to Italy’s cultural and economic interests, while Italy-returned young writers actively engaged in exalting the achievements of Mussolini’s government and, on certain occasions, countering anti-fascist or anti-Italian propaganda in India, as in the aftermath of the Abyssinian campaign of 1935 (Casolari 2020, 58–84). In this respect, P.N. Roy was perhaps the most radical pro-fascist writer. In Mussolini, he saw a man of unique stature “through whom world’s destiny is creating a new scheme of human, social relations”. Others were less pronouncedly political in their attitude, even as they did project the fascist state as a viable model for future independent India. Monindra Mohan Moulik was one such friendly commenter, whose writings aimed at making the Indian public familiar with contemporary Italy as he had personally experienced it.12 This attitude of compliance with the specific needs of the Italian partners should not, however, obfuscate the Swadeshi-inspired motive of knowledge acquisition that moved Kalidas Nag and his peers. In a letter written in Italian to Giovanni Gentile soon after the establishment of Ismeo, Nag gave a clear illustration of his views on the educational cooperation with Italy as conducive to India’s economic advance. Nag requested Gentile to facilitate the institute’s support not only to Indian students but also to enquirers who are already possessed of experience in business and a broad international outlook, to economists with a distinct tendency to practical application of knowledge, to industrialists wishing to improve the exploitation of India’s vast natural resources with the help of Italian expertise. Rome’s International Institute of Agriculture, for instance, could have provided precious theoretic and material assistance to India’s landowners and experts in agriculture for the “material and moral welfare of more than 80% of our 250 millions”. In the industrial field, Nag proposed the creation of a “general inspectorate” which would coordinate Indian and Italian initiatives to mutual advantage, while there was ample scope for profitable joint ventures with reference to banking, insurance and navigation. The compilation of a “handbook” providing detailed information on Italian commercial firms would also greatly help Indian traders to place orders for “agricultural implements, textile machinery, electric materials, chemical and pharmaceutical products”.13 While students represented an investment for the future, Nag seemed to argue, even at present there was scope for valorizing the skills of Indian élites.

Emissaries of Swadeshi 211 For the pursuit of national interests, Kalidas Nag and his collaborators created an organization providing essential links between local students and foreign institutions. The core agency was the India Bureau, an “international society for cultural federation” established in Calcutta in 1931. During the 1930s, the India Bureau sent several Bengali students to Italy who then often acted as its correspondents and representatives abroad. A noteworthy example was Amiyanath Sarkar, a nephew of the noted historian Jadunath Sarkar, who became director of the Hindustan Association and a spokesperson of the India Bureau in Italy (Prayer 1996, 63). As noted earlier, the support for Italy under fascism did not keep Bengali intellectuals from pursuing their agenda in cosmopolitan fora. To take one instance, Kalidas Nag participated in the Women’s International Congress for Peace and Freedom on “The Role of Internationalism in the Development of Civilization” held at Lugano in 1922 and came in close touch with European writers and thinkers such as Hermann Hesse, Bertrand Russell and Romain Rolland. His talk on Greater India and Internationalism was much appreciated and gained him immediate renown in European pacifist circles.14 Nag later became a collaborator for intellectual cooperation in the Secretariat of the League of Nations, and in that capacity worked at promoting contemporary India on the international scene. Other platforms of leftist-oriented cosmopolitanism where he was active included the International Labour Organization and PEN, an international writers’ association (Prayer 1996, 67). The Indo-Italian educational cooperation owed much of its success to a distinct symmetry in both partners’ aims. For Italians, the cultural side was seen as a condition for the pursuance of economic ends, which would strengthen their country’s position in both the domestic and international contexts. To Bengali internationalists, educational cooperation with foreign countries served as a channel of acquisition of useful knowledge for nation-building purposes, and in that sense, it aptly combined the principles of atmashakti and visvashakti. On the political plane, moreover, Italy hoped that the participation of “insiders” in its propaganda activities would increase their effectiveness. The policy of acquiring a foothold in the British colony in view of its independence in the near future meant that India’s aspiration to self-government was seen as legitimate by a prominent actor on the European stage. Bengali friends of Italy returned the favour and even took up Italy’s defence whenever required, thereby anticipating the expression of an autonomous Indian foreign policy. The intellectual appreciation of contemporary Italy “Knowledge affiliations” were also developed from the perspective of intellectual engagement with the world scene. Rather than material benefits,

212  Mario Prayer the moving factor in this case was India’s integration within contemporary intellectual trends as a necessary step towards ending India’s isolation imposed by colonial rule. To Bengali internationalists, Italy presented a few areas of interest in this respect as well. One broad area of shared interest was, of course, that of Indian studies. The direct exposure to continental schools of indology had provided Kalidas Nag with a new conceptual framework in the interpretation of Indian history. Particularly Sylvain Lévi, his mentor in Paris, had encouraged him to transcend the boundaries of the British colonial view of Indian civilization as passive and only capable of lofty abstractions, and work at the recovery of India’s autonomous and progressive historical subjectivity. In the early 1920s, Nag was to develop these ideas around the notion of Greater India by which he referred to that “forgotten chapter” in history when India had promoted a highly developed material and spiritual civilization across Asia and beyond.15 That chapter was thus seen as an inspiring antecedent for the present internationalist movement. In Italy, Formichi in his research work over almost three decades had been throwing a fresh look at less-known areas of India’s intellectual and social history (Formichi 1899, 1914, 1923a, 1925). In a bid to rectify the then prevailing stereotyped view of India as a purely spiritual civilization, he focused on the dynamic and constructive forces beginning with the Upanishads and the related schools of idealism. Buddhism and Indian political doctrines, with special focus on Kautilya and Kamandaki, were among his favourite fields of study. Kalidas Nag found Formichi’s scholarship particularly relevant for his own work on Kautilya’s Arthasastra and started with him a profitable dialogue on what they discovered was a shared approach to India’s past. Formichi’s former student Giuseppe Tucci continued this innovative trend through his focus on Buddhism, which he considered a dynamic counterbalance to Brahmanical dharma. He also made enquiries into Indian materialism which he selected as the topic of his address at the First Indian Philosophical Congress held at Calcutta University in December 1925 (Tucci 1925b). At Kalidas Nag’s request, Tucci also wrote an overview of Italian indology for the Modern Review, where he stressed the notion that India was not a dead country, the country of enormous poems or mystical speculations, of Yogis and Pandits, of Maharajas and mysteries, but a great and living country, or rather a world . . . which has every possibility to announce a new message to suffering humanity. (Tucci 1926, 160) Earlier on, when Nag’s book Les théories diplomatiques dans l’Inde ancienne et l’Arthaçastra was published in 1923, both Formichi and Tucci

Emissaries of Swadeshi 213 wrote laudatory reviews in prominent journals (Nag 1923; Formichi 1923b; Tucci 1925a). At Visva-Bharati in 1925, Formichi lectured on the “dynamic element” in Indian religions and on the rise of warrior castes over ascetics and priests during the late Vedic period, receiving a very positive response from the local academic community (Formichi 1926a, 1926b, 1926c). Another admirer of Italian indology was the social scientist Benoy Kumar Sarkar. As is well-known, Sarkar devoted a large part of his studies to the re-evaluation of the “positive foundation” of the Indian cultural tradition. Secular and materialistic currents constituted, in his opinion, the backbone of the centuries-old history of the “Hindu nation” (Sarkar 1914–1926). A significant theme in this regard was the history of Indian political doctrines. He aimed at building up a universal interpretive framework where Indian and European ideas could be compared and evaluated against each other. Until at least the beginning of the industrial era, he thought, there were profound affinities between India and the West. Sarkar thus judged Italian indological studies of extreme interest, especially with regard to Formichi’s arguments which he saw as being “almost identical both in form and spirit” to his own. He considered Formichi’s work as “eminently exceptional in the annals of orientalism in general and of indology in particular”, and appreciated his focus on the secular, materialistic and anti-mystical currents of Indian literature (Sarkar 1925b, 747). The study of Indian political treatises, when conducted not as an orientalistic exercise in philology, but as part of a universal history of ideas, could serve, in Sarkar’s words, “to liberalize Western lore on the one hand and on the other to expand the bounds of indology, thus enlarging the view-points of scholarship in social science” (Sarkar 1925a, 551). The idea that India’s cultural significance was not confined to a glorious past of transcendental philosophies was also evident in some Italian indologists’ interest in modern literature in the vernacular languages. In the early 1920s, Ferdinando Belloni-Filippi, a teacher of Sanskrit at the University of Pisa, required Kalidas Nag’s help in the publication of Bengali fiction in Italian, which resulted in the Italian versions of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Chandrasekhar and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Srikanta, both in 1925 (Nag 1994, 28). Bengali, the regional language that had been the focus of many atmashakti initiatives during the Swadeshi movement, was naturally dear to Bengali internationalists, yet there was something more essential to this focus on language specificity as revealed by the eagerness with which scholars like Kalidas Nag, Benoy Sarkar16 and Surendranath Dasgupta made sure to acquire proficiency in continental European languages – French, German and Italian. The attitude of openness to linguistic diversity had characterized the Bengali Renaissance right from its inception, when Rammohan Roy had embarked on a study of literary sources

214  Mario Prayer belonging to other civilizations in their original version in order to favour India’s integration with the world. In the early 20th century, this attitude had acquired a marked political relevance through the rejection of English as the language of colonial subjection. This points to the importance of recognition of Bengali by Western scholars as a matter of reciprocity. During his stay in Bengal in the latter part of the 1920s, Tucci taught Italian and, at the same time, studied Bengali and became proficient in the language. This considerably helped him, as he wrote in a report to the Italian government in 1928, in establishing a cordial and lasting entente with “the cream of Indian society” (cit. in Casolari 2020, 11), that is, those influential scholars and intellectuals whom he intended to involve in his programmes. An outstanding member of the “cream” of Calcutta was the noted historian of Indian philosophy, Surendranath Dasgupta, whose residence Tucci used to regularly visit during his Bengal years. An interesting cameo of the young Tucci is found in Dasgupta’s daughter, Maitreyi Devi’s autobiographical novel It does not die (1976). In the latter part of the 1920s, she wrote, Many foreigners visited us. Our house hummed with scholarly discussions on literary and philosophical problems.17 Of the constant visitors, I remember most Stella Kramrisch and Professor Tucci. Professor Tucci looked almost like a student. A lock of obstinate hair constantly fell on his young face, he intermittently pushed it back with a jerk of his hand. His lovely wife [Giulia] always wore a pearl necklace. Professor Tucci knew twelve languages and spoke Bengali fluently. (27) Dasgupta, who could “easily reduce a person in argument to shambles; he is very fond of this game” (26), took a liking to Tucci who, on his part, considered him “Italy’s greatest collaborator” at the University of Calcutta, along with Shyama Prasad Mookerjee.18 Their collaboration proved to be profitable. Dasgupta was invited to deliver lectures in Italy several times between 1930 and 1939 (Surama Dasgupta 1954, ix–x). He also participated in the joint educational programmes by recommending deserving Bengali students, organizing a scholarship for an Italian student at Calcutta University and helping in establishing Italian as a subject for examination in the University of Calcutta (Casolari 2020, 13). In 1935, Dasgupta was received by Mussolini and the minister of external affairs, Galeazzo Ciano. In 1938, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Sapienza University and visited Rome again the next year for the conferment (Dasgupta 1971, 99–151). The ceremony was popularized in the video news which then

Emissaries of Swadeshi 215 introduced cinema shows in Italy.19 On that occasion, he delivered five lectures on the theme of Indian art which were also published in Italian by Ismeo (Dasgupta 1940).20 As part of his Doctorate address, Dasgupta referred to his cordial, prolonged intercourse with Italy. “My first love and loyalty”, he said, goes naturally to my mother-country, India; but the second goes to Italy, the ancient seat of wisdom and beauty, which has endeared herself so much to me by so many ties of association, and it is a known fact that the second love is always stronger than the first. (Dasgupta 1954, xi) On leaving Italy for other European destinations at the end of April 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he wrote in gratitude to Giovanni Gentile: My dear Senatore, Probably we may not [meet] again in life or for years to come. . . . I saw Ciano yesterday but I am sorry I could not meet the Duce and I feel very disappointed on that account. I have sent through Ciano the picture painted by my daughter.21 . . . If the Duce finds any time when he can give me an audience, I shall come from any distance to pay homage to him and I shall be glad if you could kindly communicate to him this fact directly. .  .  . On the eve of my departure, I  record my deep sense of gratitude for all that you have done for me and the cordiality and affection that I received in the hands of so many persons. I beg to thank you and the Istituto [Ismeo] most cordially and most heartily, and I feel chained down with a debt of gratefulness which I cannot ever repay.22 Dasgupta was a well-known figure among European philosophical circles. In 1921, the year when the first volume of his monumental History of Indian Philosophy came out, his participation in the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris ensured him a large notoriety. In 1924, he was invited to Naples on the fifth session of the same Congress as a representative of the University of Calcutta and Bengal government’s Department of Education. His prestigious career continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s with several conference presentations and lectures in various European cities. Surendranath Dasgupta used different approaches while negotiating with two philosophical fronts, the local and the international. Rigorous and inflexible with his own students, he was more tolerant when interacting with

216  Mario Prayer Western audiences for whom he often employed Western terminology and references or selected topics of “general” interest, such as “Idealism and Mysticism, Yoga and devotion” (Dasgupta 1971, 99). Even the “Indian philosophy” he proposed abroad can be seen as a conceptual generalization that he would never use while dealing with specific darshanas at home (Serebriany 2016). This was in a way necessary to Dasgupta. While a solid foundation in one’s own tradition was essential, the Indo-Western trans-cultural encounter required adjustments that would make it productive. Evidence of Dasgupta’s attitude can be gathered from his participation at the Naples conference in 1924. In his search for a dialogue between India and the West within a sort of universal history of philosophic ideas, Dasgupta proposed the establishment of a new discipline, which he called “Comparative Philosophy”, and provided a specimen of it by tracing similarities and differences between Benedetto Croce’s philosophy and Buddhism.23 As a preliminary point, Dasgupta made it clear that in his “comparing and contrasting” Croce and Buddhism, he did not intend to erase the historical specificity in which philosophical ideas arise. “But if we examine the situation critically – he argued – we may almost unhesitatingly say that there is as much material agreement as could be expected” (Dasgupta 1941, 132). Moreover, “the similarity of the Buddhist doctrine with that of Croce strikes as deserving an enquiry” (139). The highly erudite and finely articulated discussion reaches the conclusion that most of Croce’s arguments had been anticipated in Buddhist thought – and wherever they differed, Croce was “at a disadvantage” (135). In his response, Croce, who was chairing that session of the congress, expressed his pleasure by saying, “I feel proud to know that my ideas and thoughts could come so close to Buddhism, such a great thought in the whole world. I  feel happy that my philosophy could be compared with such a great system of thought” (Dasgupta 1971, 74).24 In commenting on Croce’s philosophic views, Dasgupta’s aim was not to claim the pre-eminence of ancient India over modern Europe, but rather to foster the advancement of knowledge beyond stereotyped attitudes hindering a deeper exchange of ideas. In his own words, A study of modern thoughts in their old garbs as they appear in Indian philosophy is likely to have highly suggestive value for the health and vigour of new philosophical achievements. It may open new channels for the progress of philosophy and the extension of world-culture. (Dasgupta 1941, 121) According to Dasgupta, the reach of human knowledge could be expanded towards a universal horizon encompassing all the world’s lineages of

Emissaries of Swadeshi 217 thought. The study of ancient Indian thought, he stressed, should not be a mere philological exercise or an archaeology of “dead bones”, as it was at present to many European “Sanskrit scholars”, but a living heritage to be dealt with by specialists of philosophy endowed with a mastery of Sanskrit, so that they could access the original sources (119). One notices here a close resemblance with ideas proposed by Carlo Formichi two decades earlier, particularly his contention that the ancient Indian schools of thought had something to contribute to “the intellectual education [and] moral improvement of mankind”, and that “the brilliant insights of Indian thinkers [present] something that can be and is common to our modern thinking” (Formichi 1910, 88). In Croce, Dasgupta saw a significant exponent of current European idealism in its reaction both to Hegelian idealism and to Comteian positivism. Dasgupta’s interest in contemporary idealism also inspired his study of Giovanni Gentile’s doctrine of “Pure act” (Idealism in Gentile, in Dasgupta 1941, 1–28).25 Here we find Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, Locke, Hegel, Bergson, Buddhism, Vedanta, and Nyaya all reunited in the critical discussion of various themes in the history of philosophy. An additional dimension to the Croce-Buddhism comparison is, however, provided by the special meaning Dasgupta attached to Buddhism as India’s first-ever “universal religion based on the equality of rights and privileges of all mankind”. Recalling the Naples conference during a lecture at Sarnath in November 1931, Dasgupta noted that the very fact that no one had seriously challenged his arguments, not even Croce himself, “probably the most eminent continental philosopher now living”, proved that “the contributions of the Buddhist thought seem at the same time to be the most ancient as well as the most modern”. In the present atmosphere, he went on, where “the Western world is building up memorials for encouraging the killing of human beings . . . while science is being enslaved for robbing the freedom and prosperity of others”, Buddhism with its appeal to “friendship and forgiveness, sympathy and charity” offered a road to “peace and happiness” instead. It was, in other words, an inspiration for the contemporary world which actualized its relevance in the inter-cultural dialogue. This was, he thought, the “Message of India” to mankind (Dasgupta 1941, 261, 271, 275). That Dasgupta’s activities abroad were not purely academic and had a wide political significance in support of international fraternity and peace is further illustrated in the letters he wrote to his second wife Surama in 1935. It appears that even while dealing with philosophical themes, he often tried to “rub in” the message of internationalism in his lectures by appealing to the heart of his listeners. He attached special importance to

218  Mario Prayer delivering that message to Europe. While in Rome in April that year, he wrote, I have spoken about [Internationalism] in my lecture on Yoga Mysticism and have rubbed it in in almost all my talks. My lectures have been very much appreciated. . . . The first day when I rubbed in Internationalism in my lecture, there was a little murmur among the young members of the audience. Fascism is wholly nationalistic. Previously there was a talk of armament control in every country; now there is the talk of greater manufacture of arms. . . . If I wish to preach international morality by criticizing national morality in this kind of tense atmosphere, then the little murmur that I  caused in my audience is nothing to be surprised at. . . . But the way I approached the problem, the deeper human truth of it, did have its appeal to the audience, – I could understand that. . . . Still I think the message of equality of men inherent in Internationalism will also be sent from here, from Europe. That is why one has to give here the idea of international brotherhood of man. It will never get lost even if it floats away at present. It is bound to come back. Whatever idea originates here, comes with a new vitality, new energy, since it comes from within the heart of the people. (Dasgupta 1971, 104–6) Dasgupta was not intimidated by hostile reactions to his criticism of contemporary Europe, nor did he intend to criticize Italy’s fascist regime. In a broader perspective, he saw it as his duty to awake his European listeners to that “deeper human truth” and give it a fresh impulse for the establishment of “equality of men” and “international brotherhood”. And despite the constraints of a strongly politicized public life and the rising tensions in international relations, those ideas seemed to strike a chord in his audience, even in fascist Italy. For all his sharpness and rigour of intellect, he was inclined at times to appeal to the emotional side of his listeners. While delivering a lecture in Rome in 1935, he recalled, I lost myself completely, forgot the time and place and words flowed out in a stream as it were, on devotion and love of God. Glory be to devotion. Most of the audience were very deeply touched, tears came into their eyes and there was a hearty applause. When the lecture was over, many came and sat around me and I started chanting God’s name. They also tried to join in and even when they could not pronounce the name, they looked on at me. The atmosphere became charged with a unique emotion. What a universal appeal has chanting of God’s name! Where is India and where is Rome? – in a single

Emissaries of Swadeshi 219 moment all barriers of nationality and religion were broken and people felt a surge of unity. (Dasgupta 1971, 105) Among certain sections of Bengali and Italian societies, the pursuit of intellect was not divested from an inner enthusiasm and perception of the unity of mankind. The emotional involvement, moreover, is known to be an essential factor in the sadhana of many Indian religious and philosophical traditions. The audience’s response in Rome seemed to point to common traits in this respect as well, which perhaps happened less frequently in other, more rationalistic cultural environments of Europe. In this case, the invitation to a trans-cultural dialogue found an unexpected, additional response at destination. Conclusion In his letter to Mussolini mentioned earlier, P.N. Roy summed up the attitude and motivations of Bengali internationalists working at international understanding and cooperation. “I am writing this letter”, he explained, in my capacity as a representative of India, a country and a people who for long centuries have witnessed days of glory, but nowadays sit voiceless at the concert of nations because of the political tragedy that has befallen them. We do not have ambassadors to represent our cause and aspirations, to safeguard our interests before others, to establish contacts and friendly relations with other nations, to spread knowledge on our country and its civilization. We all, therefore, poets, scientists, men of letters and students, see it as our duty to advocate the cause of our country wherever we go. This sentiment and the love for my country prompts me to address this letter to Your Excellency.26 A dedication to the cause of inter-cultural understanding was a common feature of Bengal’s intellectual history since the 19th century. For many Bengali internationalists of the early 20th century, the eagerness to learn and teach, to welcome and be welcomed, was part of the atmashaktivishvashakti binomial and inspired them as they approached Italian counterparts, particularly indologists and philosophers with whom they found a commonality of intent and orientations. The inter-war period was an incubator of principles and modes of operation in international relations which would ripen in the subsequent historical phase. As is well known, the advocacy of international equality, dialogue and peace in an anti-imperialist perspective, along with the

220  Mario Prayer principle of not interfering in another country’s inner political domain, were the cornerstones of India’s foreign policy as adopted by Jawaharlal Nehru and V.K. Krishna Menon in the early decades after independence. At the same time, the pursuit of higher studies abroad and industrial joint ventures considerably intensified since the end of World War II. And as to Italy, as pointed out by a recent study (Spagnulo 2020), the attitude to India before and after World War II shows a remarkable continuity in the notion that cultural relations can be conducive to economic and, occasionally, political advantage for both sides. Notes 1 Tagore’s atmashakti was formulated in the mid-1880s (Sarkar 1973, 52), while Benoy Sarkar’s vishvashakti dates to 1914 (Goswami 2012, 1468). 2 On the development of Italian policy towards India, see Marzia Casolari’s chapter in this book. 3 A comprehensive biography of Nag has not yet been attempted. For autobiographical material, see Nag 1991a, 1991b, 1994. 4 For Tucci’s detailed biography, see Crisanti 2020. 5 Tagore had already visited Italy in 1878 and 1925; see Introduction in this book. 6 R. Tagore’s letter to B. Mussolini, 10 March 1926: Rabindra Bhavana Collection, Correspondence, file “Mussolini”. 7 S.C. Bose’s letters to K. Nag, dtd. respectively 15 February 1926 and 25 December 1935: Kalidas Nag Papers. 8 Amiya Chakravarti was also received by Mussolini in 1935 (Casolari 2020, 59–61). 9 On Benoy Sarkar’s role in the creation of an Italo-Indian Institute, see Flora 1994; Casolari 2020. 10 K. Nag’s letter to E. Pagliano, 12 September 1931: ASMAE, Rassegna Generale, folder no. 7 (1931). 11 P.N. Roy’s letter to B. Mussolini, n.d. [December 1933]: Fondazione Gentile, “Correspondence”. 12 See Roy 1932, 1934; Moulik 1935, 1936a, 1936b, 1937a, 1937b, 1938, 1940. For further details, see Prayer 1996, 63–65, 92–98. 13 K. Nag’s letter to G. Gentile, 8 June  1933: Fondazione Gentile, “Correspondence”. 14 Nag’s talk was published in Italy by Rassegna Internazionale, a journal affiliated to the London Union of Democratic Control, in April 1923. 15 On Greater India, see, among others, Bayly 2004; Vivekanandan 2018; Prayer 2021. 16 Sarkar made ample use of sources in Italian in his study of the fascist state and authored books in Italian with the aim of spreading information in Italy about the recent development of Indian society and economy (Sarkar 1930, 1931a, 1931b). 17 Elsewhere Maitreyi Devi noted, with a good touch of irony, “All the foreign students who visited Santiniketan came to meet father too and were entertained by him. They were seekers of truth” (29). 18 G. Tucci’s letter to G. Gentile, n.d. [February  1935]: Fondazione Gentile, “Correspondence”. 19 See the video at Istituto Luce’s website (last accessed on 5 August  2021), https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com/luce-web/detail/IL5000019698/2/ la-laurea-honoris-causa-al-professor-das-gupta.

Emissaries of Swadeshi 221 20 Posthumously published in English as Fundamentals of Indian Art (Dasgupta 1954). 21 In a letter to Gentile, Tucci had earlier proposed to extend Rome University’s invitation to Dasgupta’s daughter, Maitreyi Devi and to organize an exhibition of her paintings. G. Tucci’s letter to G. Gentile, n.d. [March 1939]: Fondazione Gentile, “Correspondence”. 22 S. Dasgupta’s letter to G. Gentile, 28 April  1939: Fondazione Gentile, “Correspondence”. 23 Dasgupta’s presentation Indian Philosophy in Relation to Contemporary Italian Thought was included in the conference proceedings (Dasgupta 1925), and later republished as Croce and Buddhism (Dasgupta 1941, 117–50; quotations in the text are from the latter version). 24 On Croce’s views on Indian logic see Croce 1909, 407–8. 25 Dasgupta quoted Gentile’s Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro in Italian in this essay. 26 See note 11.

References Bayly, Susan. 2004. “Imagining ‘Greater India’: French and Indian Visions of Colonialism in the Indic Mode.” Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 3: 703–44. Casolari, Marzia. 2020. In the Shadow of the Swastika. The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism. London and New York: Routledge. Crisanti, Alice. 2020. Giuseppe Tucci. Una biografia. Milan: Unicopli. Croce, Benedetto. 1909. Logica come scienza del concetto puro. Bari: Laterza. Dasgupta, Surama. 1954. “Preface.” In Surendranath Dasgupta 1954, ix–xii. ———. 1971. An Ever-Expanding Quest of Life and Knowledge. Calcutta: Orient Longman. Dasgupta, Surendranath. 1925. “Indian Philosophy in Relation to Contemporary Italian Thought.” In Atti del V Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia, edited by G. Della Valle, 1154–76. Napoli-Genova-Città di Castello: Perrella. ———. 1940. L’intimo aspetto dell’antica arte Indiana. Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. ———. 1941. Philosophical Essays. Calcutta: University of Calcutta. ———. 1954. Fundamentals of Indian Art. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Ferretti, Valdo. 1986. “Politica e cultura: origini e attività dell’Ismeo durante il regime fascista.” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 5: 779–819. Flora, Giuseppe. 1994. Benoy Kumar Sarkar and Italy: Culture, Politics and Economic Ideology. New Delhi: Italian Embassy Cultural Centre. Formichi, Carlo. 1899. Gl’Indiani e la loro scienza politica. Bologna: Merlani. ———. 1910 (with F. Belloni-Filippi). Il pensiero religioso e filosofico dell’India. Firenze: Biblioteca Filosofica. ———. 1914. Pensiero e azione nell’India antica. Scansano: Olmi. ———. 1923a. “Lo spirito scientifico del Buddhismo.” Bilychnis 12, nos. 8–9: 189–95. ———. 1923b. Review of Nag 1923. Alle fonti delle religioni 3, nos. 3–4: 65–73. ———. 1925. I primi principi della politica secondo Kamandaki. Roma: Istituto Romano Editoriale.

222  Mario Prayer ———. 1926a. “The Dynamic Element in Indian Religious Development.” VisvaBharati Quarterly 3, no. 4: 339–52. ———. 1926b. “The Upanishadic Period.” Calcutta Review 21, no. 1: 1–20. ———. 1926c. “Atman in the Upanishads.” Calcutta Review 21, no. 2: 181–95. Framke, Maria. 2016. “Shopping Ideologies for Independent India? Taraknath Das’s Engagement With Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.” Itinerario 40, no. 1: 55–81. Frost, Mark R. 2012. “ ‘Beyond the Limits of Nation and Geography’: Rabindranath Tagore and the Cosmopolitan Moment, 1916–1920.” Cultural Dynamics 24, nos. 2–3: 143–58. Goswami, Manu. 2012. “Imaginary Futures and Colonial Internationalisms.” The American Historical Review 117, no. 5: 1461–85. Kundu, Kalyan Kumar. 2009. Itali saphare Rabindranth o Musolini prasanga. Kolkata: Punashcha (English version: 2015. Meeting With Mussolini: Tagore’s Tour in Italy, 1925 and 1926. New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Maitreyi Devi. 1976. It Does Not Die. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press (original in Bengali: 1974. Na hanyate. Calcutta: Prima Publications). Manjapra, Kris. 2012. “Knowledgeable Internationalism and the Swadeshi Movement, 1903–1921.” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 42: 53–62. Moulik, Monindra Mohan. 1935. “Gandhismo e neogandhismo.” Civiltà fascista 2, no. 2: 155–64. ———. 1936a. “Carducci and the New Italy.” India and the World 5, no. 2: 34–6. ———. 1936b. “Ideologie in conflitto nel nazionalismo asiatico.” Asiatica 3, nos. 5–6: 240–51. ———. 1937a. La politica finanziaria britannica in India. Bologna: Zanichelli. ———. 1937b. Lo spirito dell’amore nella letteratura indiana. Roma: Ismeo. ———. 1938. “Nuove tendenze nel nazionalismo indiano.” Asiatica 5, no. 3: 177–87. ———. 1940. Italian Economy and Culture. A  Study in Economic and Social Transformation. Calcutta: Chuckervertty, Chatterjee & Co. Nag, Kalidas. 1923. Les théories diplomatiques dans l’Inde ancienne et l’Arthaçastra. Paris: Maisonneuve. ———. 1991a. Dayeri. Calcutta: Papyrus. ———. 1991b. Memoirs, Vol. 1: 1891–1921. Edited by S. Lal and P. Viswanathan. Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop. ———. 1994. Memoirs, Vol. 2: 1921–1923. Edited by S. Lal and P. Viswanathan. Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop. Prayer, Mario. 1991. “Italian Fascist Regime and Nationalist India, 1921–1945.” International Studies 28, no. 3: 249–71. ———. 1996. Internazionalismo e nazionalismo culturale. Gli intellettuali bengalesi e l’Italia negli anni Venti e Trenta. Roma: Bardi. ———. 2021. “Crossing the Boundaries: Anti-colonialism, Pan-Asianism, and Hindu-National History in the ‘Greater India’ Movement, 1926–1945.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 94, nos. 2–4: 161–74. Roy, Pramatha Nath. 1932. Mussolini and the Cult of Italian Youth. Calcutta: R. Chatterjee. ———. 1934. Twelve Years of Fascism. Calcutta: Italian Community in India.

Emissaries of Swadeshi 223 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar. 1914–1926. The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology. 3 vols. Allahabad: Panini Office. ———. 1925a. “Hindu Politics in Italian” (part 1). Indian Historical Quarterly 1, no. 3: 545–60. ———. 1925b. “Hindu Politics in Italian” (part 2). Indian Historical Quarterly 1, no. 4: 743–59. ———. 1930. Società ed economia nell’India antica e moderna. Milano: Tipografia Sociale. ———. 1931a. Il movimento industriale e commerciale nell’India ed i suoi rapporti internazionali. Roma: Camera dei Deputati. ———. 1931b. I quozienti di natalità, di mortalità e di aumento naturale nell’India attuale nel quadro della demografia comparata. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Sarkar, Sumit. 1973. The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House. Serebriany, Sergei. 2016. “The Concept of ‘Indian Philosophy’ as a Product of Intercultural Dialogue (Wilhelm Halbfass’s India and Europe Revisited).” Politeja 1, no. 40: 227–52. Spagnulo, Giuseppe. 2020. Il Risorgimento dell’Asia. India e Pakistan nella politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1980). Firenze: Le Monnier. Tucci, Giuseppe. 1925a. Review of Nag 1923. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 10, no. 4: 718–19. ———. 1925b. “A  Sketch of Indian Materialism.” In Proceedings of the First Indian Philosophical Congress, 34–44. Calcutta: Calcutta Philosophical Society. ———. 1926. “Italian Indology.” Modern Review 39, no. 2: 158–61. Vivekanandan, Jayashree. 2018. “Indianisation or Indigenisation? Greater India and the Politics of Cultural Diffusionism.” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 56, no. 1: 1–21.

Postscript

11 The Continuing Cultural Exchanges Between Italy and Bengal Interview of Consul General Dr Gianluca Rubagotti With the Editors of the Volume As a coda to our book on Bengal-Italy exchanges, we decided to interview the current consul general of Italy in Kolkata Dr  Gianluca Rubagotti. The conversation helped us to understand the continuing diplomatic and cultural dialogues between Bengal and Italy and to locate the 19th- and 20th-century interactions between the two cultures within a dynamic and enduring relationship. We would like to know how the consulate general of Italy has thought of promoting cultural links and exchanges with Kolkata and West Bengal. My arrival in West Bengal has coincided with a significant period in the celebrations of the bilateral relations between our two countries. In 2021 the Year of Italian Culture in India was celebrated, and 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations. These important occasions deserved a planned cultural policy which could highlight the intersections and influences between Italy and West Bengal. The underpinning idea has been to start from Kolkata and West Bengal, search what fields have attracted the interest of people and the talent of local artists and try to link them with similar expressions in Italy. Please give us a few examples of this approach Sure. Let’s start with photography. During the lockdown, we have thought of creating a dialogue between two photographic archives: one of the images of Kolkata by Rajib De, and one of the pictures of different cities of Italy by the photographic circle of Trieste (Alessandro Rosani, Rossana Coslovi, Giuseppe Ialuna). The curator, Francesca Rosani, spent days trying to pair photographs from these two archives, in order to tell stories, to imagine possibilities, to stir imaginations. The result was something which exceeded our expectations: two main exhibitions of photographs arranged in diptychs or in small groups, titled From

DOI: 10.4324/9781003362173-16

228  Postscript Kolkata to Italy, the first of which, “Of places in dialogue”, with a clear focus on architectures, buildings and venues, while the second, “Of souls in celebration”, dedicated to life in its different forms. In these two exhibitions, the viewers were confronted with images of Kolkata and different Italian cities juxtaposed in order to stimulate a reflection on the similarities of urban contexts beyond apparent differences. And another experiment emerged out of these two main exhibitions? Yes, precisely. Since during the pandemic one of the main messages was “do not travel unnecessarily”, we thought of bringing art closer to the people. We rented two wagons of the historic Calcutta tram and exhibited a selection of photographs for each show (Figure 11.1). The tram did move and stop in different depots of the city, allowing a freer access to culture also to people who would not normally go to art galleries or dedicated spaces. Which Italian city does Kolkata remind you of, and why? The Ambassador of Italy to India, H.E. Vincenzo De Luca, during his first visit to Kolkata, told me: “You know, certain areas of Kolkata remind me of Naples, my city: the narrow alleys, the buzz of people in their daily activities, the street food, the love for football”. It is therefore very important to revive the twinning agreement between Kolkata and

Figure 11.1  Bengal-Italy mobile photo exhibition in Kolkata tramcar. Credit: Consulate general of Italy, Kolkata.

Postscript 229 Naples that was signed a few years ago, with a series of initiatives that will be able to bring these two cities and their inhabitants even closer. What about literature? Have you thought of possible links between Italy and Rabindranath Tagore? When you think of Bengal, his name is one of the first that comes to mind. Of course, an attempt of deepening the cultural relations between our two countries would feel somehow incomplete without studying the figure of Rabindranath Tagore. We have thought of a series of projects to highlight the less-known aspects of Tagore’s interactions with Italy. We had a literature seminar through which we tried to link the works of three very different artists: Dante Alighieri, Rabindranath Tagore and Gabriele D’Annunzio. Professors and scholars from Italy and Kolkata delved into these aspects, and the response from the public was really encouraging. Two more concrete and visible projects are taking shape: the twinning between the house-museums of Tagore and D’Annunzio, and the creation of the Italian gallery in Jorasanko Thakurbari (Tagore’s family home), which will display documents and materials on the visits of Tagore to my Country. This will be a permanent gift to the city of Kolkata and its inhabitants. And what about possible processes of cross-fertilization between our two cultures? This is a very interesting idea, and we have tried to implement it in different sectors. We have taken some Italian content and tried to reproduce them in a Bengali manner. What are you referring to, in particular? Two of the most famous characters that Dante meets with in his journey through hell are Paolo and Francesca, who have later become a symbol of a troubled love, which challenges family and societal impositions. We have offered to the public a version of their story narrated through classical Indian dance and the music of Tagore, thus allowing a new form of enjoyment, still keeping the original spirit alive. Or think of the world-famous story of Pinocchio. We have used traditional forms of Bengali art, like glove puppetry, patachitra (Bengali scroll painting) and puppet show to recreate the adventure of the protagonists of Carlo Collodi’s story. The local public was thus able to get acquainted with a foreign character through more familiar media of expression.

230  Postscript Any examples of the inverse, with the Italianization of Bengali content? Of course, you can see that in the oil on canvas and mixed media paintings by Maurizio Boscheri and Daniel Calovi. They have used their very recognisable artistic style to produce a series of paintings of the royal Bengal tiger, one of the symbols of this part of the world. Maurizio Boscheri has already been to Kolkata in the past months and has painted a mural, together with some young local artists, representing the national animal (royal Bengal tiger) and bird (peacock) of India. I know that a number of people now go to Gariahat (Kolkata shopping area) looking for this “mural of friendship” to take selfies. Furthermore, we are working on instilling a little bit of Italy in one of the Durga Puja pandals, to create an even stronger bond between our two cultures. We have also seen a couple of very interesting calendars . . . You are referring to the adventures of Puchki and Cookie in Italy, a series designed by Upal Sengupta, through which we try to familiarize younger readers with the treasures of Italy. In the first story, the Kolkata teenager Puchki, together with her dog Cookie, arrives in Italy and in her dream meets with a number of illustrious Italians of the past. In the second one, in Florence, she discovers the figure of Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy. We are working on the third adventure, which will take place in Naples.

Index

adaptation 5, 10 – 1, 59 – 60, 62 – 8, 70 – 80, 81n7, 93, 101, 103n25, 127, 131, 133 Akash Kusum 12, 127 – 32, 135 – 8, 141n14 Alfano, Franco 11, 41, 45 – 52, 55nn26 – 8, 55n30 Alighieri, Dante see Dante Alighieri andarmahal 93 – 4, 99 antiquity 86 – 7, 101, 124n14, 158 architecture 3, 5, 10 – 11, 85 – 101, 101nn1 – 3, 101n5, 102n6, 103nn22 – 5, 111, 113, 183, 194 – 5, 228 art cinema 127, 139 art gallery 100, 109, 111, 113 – 15, 120, 123nn6 – 8, 123n13, 228 art song 40 – 1, 50 Asiatic Society 109, 112, 122, 123n4, 178 auction 106, 118, 123n3 avant-garde 42, 46, 52, 118, 123, 127, 134, 141n23 Ayurveda 170 Bandyopadhyay, Ajitesh 62 – 7, 80, 81n7 Bandyopadhyay, Hemchandra 28, 30 – 1, 122 Banerjea, Surendranath 7, 184 – 5, 197n1 Bangla stage 60, 64, 66, 71, 74, 76 – 80, 80n1 Bangla theatre 59 – 63, 67, 76, 80, 81n3 Bankimchandra see Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra Beethoven, Ludwig van 42 – 4, 53nn8 – 9

Benasaglio, Guido 156 – 7, 162n39, 162n48 Bengal school (of painting) 107, 118 – 19, 122 Bengali poetry 27, 40, 49, 52, 122, 198n8 Betti, Ugo 11, 59, 76 – 7, 80 Bose, Abala 120 – 1, 182, 188, 198n14 Bose, Subhas Chandra 8 – 9, 154 – 5, 157, 162nn35 – 6, 208 Buddhism 23 – 5, 170, 212, 216 – 17, 221n23 Calcutta School of Art 11, 106 – 7, 109 – 14, 118 – 22 Calcutta University 21, 121, 212, 214 Camerini, Mario 12, 128, 130, 134 Casella, Alfredo 11, 41 – 3, 45 – 6, 52, 53n1, 53nn8 – 9, 54nn17 – 19, 55n33, 56nn40 – 1, 56n45 Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Mario 41, 43 – 5, 48, 52, 53n10, 54n11, 54n13, 54n17 Chakrabarti, Biharilal 32 Chakraborty, Bibhash 67 – 8, 70, 72, 77 Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra 7, 10, 22 – 5, 213 Ciano, Galeazzo 214 – 15 collection 26, 94 – 7, 99, 102n9, 106 – 9, 111 – 15, 121 – 2, 124n20, 167 colonial 2, 5, 9 – 13, 59, 61, 80n1, 85 – 7, 90, 93, 95, 100 – 1, 102n8, 106 – 7, 109 – 13, 118 – 19, 121 – 2, 126, 147 – 50, 159, 164 – 8, 176 – 7, 181, 191, 197, 198n10, 198n15, 203, 212, 214 column 88 – 9, 99

232 Index Commedia all’italiana 12, 127 – 39, 140nn6 – 8, 140nn10 – 12, 141n20, 141n22, 141n24 commissions 106, 108, 111 – 12, 120, 122 Communist Party 14, 60 – 1, 66, 68 – 73, 81n9 concert 42 – 3, 45 – 7, 56n36, 56nn40 – 1 conservatorio 40, 43, 45 – 6, 49 – 51, 54nn20 – 1 conservatory see conservatorio conspicuous consumption 135, 141n19 contemporaneity 132 – 3, 135 coral 12, 170 – 7, 179nn8 – 9, 179n12, 179n15 Croce, Benedetto 192, 216 – 17, 221nn23 – 4 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 50, 54n18, 56n39, 193, 196, 229 Dante Alighieri 6, 10, 19 – 20, 27 – 34, 37, 52, 59, 184, 186, 192, 194, 198nn7 – 8, 229 – 30 Das, Krishnabhabini 182, 185, 188 – 9, 195, 198n2 Das, Tarak Nath 8, 154 – 5 Dasgupta, Surendranath 203, 213 – 19, 221nn21 – 3, 221n25 Datta, Akshaykumar 20 – 2, 25 Debussy, Claude 41 – 2 décalage 12, 127 – 9, 131 – 2, 135, 139 De Sica, Vittorio 130 – 1, 134, 136 – 7, 141n16 development 23, 72, 153, 167, 173, 177, 187, 191, 203, 212 Dudley, Andrew 128 Dutt, Michael Madhusudan 6, 10, 27 – 30, 60, 181, 184, 198n8 Dutt, Romesh Chandra 13, 24, 120, 182, 185 – 9 Dutt, Utpal 62 – 3, 71 – 2, 74, 81n3 education 9, 13, 20 – 2, 26 – 8, 43, 59, 62, 90, 107, 109 – 10, 112 – 13, 118 – 20, 122, 123n12, 154, 181 – 4, 189 – 90, 198n14, 202 – 12, 214 – 15, 217 empire 4, 27, 70, 85 – 90, 100 – 1, 107, 147, 150, 152, 158, 165, 176, 183, 191, 193, 197, 202, 205 – 6, 208 entablature 93, 95, 98 – 9

enterpreneur 2 – 3, 5, 11 – 12, 91 – 2, 99, 101, 102n7, 132 – 3, 165, 167, 169, 174, 177, 179nn19 – 20 entrepreneurship see entrepreneur exhibition 54n14, 106, 108, 110 – 11, 115 – 16, 120, 123n2, 127 – 8, 139, 149, 187 – 8, 198n10, 221n21, 227 – 8 export 91, 126, 148, 150, 168, 170 – 2 farce 70 – 1, 74 – 6, 80, 130 – 1, 135, 138, 140n11 fascism 3, 8 – 10, 12 – 13, 54n19, 61 – 5, 68, 72 – 4, 80, 130, 148 – 57, 159, 191 – 3, 197, 202, 206, 209 – 11, 218, 220n16 film historiography 128 – 9, 131, 134, 138 – 9 Firpo, Angelo 12, 167 – 8, 199n21 Fo, Dario 10, 59, 67 – 9, 71 – 80, 81n1 Formichi, Carlo 154, 191 – 2, 194, 206 – 7, 212 – 13, 217 Freschi, Gherardo 168 – 9 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 7, 25, 37, 184 – 5, 187, 189 gender politics 76, 80 Gentile, Giovanni 154 – 5, 161n32, 162n34, 208, 210, 215, 217, 220nn11 – 13, 220n18, 221nn21 – 2, 221n25 Ghedini, Giorgio Federico 41, 46 – 7, 52 Ghilardi, Olinto 11, 106 – 7, 112 – 18, 122, 123nn9 – 10, 124n18 Ghose, Durgabati 13, 183, 194 – 5, 199n20 Ghosh, Aurobindo 7, 37, 120 Ghosh, Kaliprasanna 25 – 6 Ghosh, Khelat Chandra 98, 102n18 Gitanjali 8, 40 – 3, 47, 53n2, 54n20, 55n31, 56n39, 207 Gorio, Giovanni 167, 178, 179n20 Greater India 208, 211 – 12, 220n15 Hastings, Warren 88, 91, 109 Havell, Ernest Binfield 107, 118 – 19, 123n7 Hesh, Sashi Kumar 11, 106, 108, 114, 118 – 22

Index  233 historiography see history history 2, 4 – 5, 9, 11, 19, 21 – 5, 31, 35, 37, 53, 59, 61, 63, 66, 72, 80, 106, 108, 114, 122, 124n21, 126 – 9, 138 – 9, 145, 167, 171, 181, 183 – 6, 196, 202, 209, 212 – 13, 216 – 17, 219 Hochhe ta ki 68 – 9, 71, 73 idealism 212, 216 – 17 ideology 2, 8, 12, 23, 59, 64 – 5, 69, 71 – 2, 76, 80, 155, 184, 197, 202, 205 Il Signor Max 12, 128, 130 – 1, 135 – 6 imperial 11, 13, 23, 85 – 8, 92, 100 – 1, 110 – 11, 120, 152, 158, 177, 181, 183, 190 – 3, 197, 204 – 6, 219 import 30, 35, 59, 65, 85, 98, 100, 126, 168 – 9, 175 independence 7 – 9, 36, 59, 145, 148 – 9, 152, 159, 185, 191, 197, 210 – 11, 220 Indianization 11, 107, 113, 118 – 19 Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) 61 – 3, 66 – 8 indologist, indology 12, 27, 154, 178, 206, 212 – 13, 219 industry 12, 70, 110, 113, 123n5, 136, 139, 141n21, 146 – 8, 153, 164, 167 – 8, 171 – 2, 175, 187, 204, 209 – 10, 213, 220 internationalism 4, 59, 134, 196 – 7, 202 – 6, 209, 211 – 13, 217 – 19 Ismeo 154 – 5, 192, 199n22, 208 – 10, 215 Italian consulate 145, 148, 150 – 1, 154, 156 – 7, 159, 209, 227 – 8 Japan 9, 36, 119, 122, 146, 175, 198n15, 204, 208 Jobbins, William Henry 107, 112 – 13, 118 – 19 Jones, Inigo 85 – 6, 101n1 Jones, William 47, 109, 183 Kalidasa 30, 47 – 8, 55n26, 60 Kautilya 206, 212 knowledge 13, 21 – 2, 37, 109, 111, 145, 148, 172, 174, 182 – 4, 198n3, 202 – 4, 210 – 11, 216 – 17, 219

landscape 12, 26, 30, 88, 90 – 2, 101, 106, 108, 111, 115, 117 – 18, 184, 197, 202 language 1 – 2, 4, 10, 19 – 21, 27 – 30, 34, 36, 40, 45, 47 – 8, 59, 61, 65, 70, 75, 80n1, 102n8, 109 – 10, 119 – 20, 178, 183, 189, 192, 194, 207, 213 – 14 Left Front 68, 73, 81n9 Left politics 8 – 10, 61 – 4, 66 – 74, 76 – 8, 80, 211 lirica da camera 41, 49, 52 Locke, Henry Hoover 107, 109 – 12, 123n12 Mahler, Gustav 41 – 2 Mahtab, Bijoy Chand 13, 182, 186 – 91 mansion 11, 26, 86, 92 – 5, 97, 99 marble 95 – 8, 102n11, 108, 122 Marble Palace 11, 26, 89, 93 – 7, 99, 121 market 61, 68, 73, 91, 98, 102n6, 108, 112, 138, 145 – 7, 150, 158, 164 – 78 Mazza family 172 – 3, 175, 179n13 Mazzini, Giuseppe 2, 7, 25, 37, 184 – 5, 187, 198n9 merchant 1, 85, 90 – 3, 99, 145 – 6, 164 – 7, 170 – 1, 173 – 4, 176 Mortari, Virgilio 41, 51 – 2, 56nn41 – 2 Moulik, Monindra Mohan 8, 13, 182 – 3, 196, 199n22, 210, 220n12 Mrityu na hatya? 72 – 3, 75 Mukharji, Trailokyanath 13, 182, 186, 190, 198n10 Mukherjee, Bimal 183, 191, 193 – 5, 198n15 Mullick, Rajendro 93 – 8 Mussolini, Benito 3, 8 – 9, 56n42, 63, 80, 149 – 59, 160n11, 161n32, 162n42, 191 – 3, 197, 197n17, 206, 208 – 10, 214, 219, 220n6, 220n8, 220n11 Nabanno 61 – 2 Nag, Kalidas 13, 183, 191 – 2, 194 – 5, 203, 206 – 13, 220n7 Nag, Rohini Kanta 114, 118, 124n17 Nandikar 62 – 4, 66 – 7, 80, 81n4 nation 2 – 8, 20, 23, 25, 36, 41, 46, 59 – 61, 64, 74, 106 – 9, 114, 119, 122, 123n11, 128 – 31, 139, 145,

234 Index 150, 153 – 4, 156, 158 – 9, 165 – 7, 177 – 8, 181 – 2, 184 – 5, 188, 190 – 7, 199n22, 202 – 8, 211, 213, 218 – 9, 230 Natyokararer Sandhane Chhoti Choritro 62, 64 – 6, 80 navigation 145 – 8, 151, 181, 207, 210 neoclassical 11, 46, 85 – 90, 92 – 3, 97 – 101, 102n20, 103n22 neorealism 9, 12, 126 – 31, 133 – 4, 138 – 9, 139nn1 – 2, 140nn3 – 4, 140n8, 140n12 nouveau riche 26, 85, 90, 92, 108 Orefice, Giacomo 50, 52, 56nn37 – 9 Oriental studies 40, 178 Orvieto, Angiolo 50, 56nn37 – 8 Pagani, Silvio 50 – 1 painting 10 – 11, 26, 93, 96 – 7, 99 – 100, 106 – 22, 123n2, 123n4, 124n15, 124n21, 133, 186, 188, 221n21, 229 – 30 palazzo 86, 89, 96 Palladio, Andrea 85 – 6, 95, 101n1 peace 8, 43, 158, 182, 192, 205 – 6, 211, 217, 219 Peliti, Federico 12, 167 – 8 Petrarca, Francesco 10, 20, 27 – 9, 32, 34 philosophy 5, 8 – 9, 11, 20 – 2, 30, 32, 41, 43 – 4, 50 – 2, 192, 199n19, 203, 208, 212 – 19, 221n23 piano 40, 42 – 4, 46, 49 – 50, 52, 53n4, 53n8, 55n23, 55n34 Pirandello, Luigi 10, 59, 62 – 8, 76, 79 – 80, 81n1, 81n7, 196 Pirelli 147 – 9 Pizzetti, Ildebrando 43, 46, 54n12, 54n19, 55n33 political theatre 61, 68, 74 – 6 portrait 106 – 9, 111 – 14, 116, 118 – 22, 123n2 propaganda 8, 12, 61, 147, 152, 154, 156 – 7, 159, 162n41, 196, 205, 210 – 11 Raffaele Costa & Co. 172, 174, 179nn10 – 11, 179nn16 – 17 Rame, Franca 10, 59, 67, 76 – 80 Rani Kahini 76

Ray, Rammohan 6, 19 – 22, 24, 213 Ray, Satyajit 126 – 7, 132, 134, 139n2, 140n3, 140n5 Renaissance 5, 7, 10 – 11, 19 – 28, 32, 34 – 7, 59, 86 – 8, 99, 101n1, 108 – 9, 119, 183 – 5, 213 Respighi, Ottorino 11, 41, 45 – 6, 50, 52, 54n19 revival of learning 20, 22 Risorgimento 2, 7, 25, 177, 184 – 5, 189, 191, 196 – 7 Rota, Nino 41, 49 – 52, 55nn33 – 5, 56n40 Roy, Pramatha Nath 8, 162n34, 199n17, 209 – 10, 219, 220nn11 – 12 Roy, Rammohan see Ray, Rammohan Royal Academy 114, 119 – 20 Rubens, Peter Paul 95 – 6, 109, 111 Sakuntala 45, 47 – 9, 55nn26 – 8 San Martino Valperga, Enrico 151 – 2 Sanskrit 21, 24, 30, 40, 44, 51, 54n22, 60, 64 – 5, 179n12, 213, 217 Sapienza University 206 – 7, 214 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar 8 – 9, 13, 183, 191, 193 – 5, 197, 199n19, 199n22, 203 – 4, 211, 213, 220n1, 220n9, 220n16 Scarpa, Gino 12, 151 – 4, 156, 161n18, 161nn23 – 5, 161n33 Schönberg, Arnold 41 – 2, 53nn4 – 5 science 3, 5, 9, 19 – 20, 22 – 3, 66, 109 – 10, 133, 168, 178, 192, 198n14, 203 – 4, 213, 217, 219 sculpture 26, 55n25, 89, 93 – 4, 97, 99, 107, 109, 113 – 14, 122, 186 Seal, Horendranath 99, 102n21 self-deluding individual 130 – 2, 137, 140n10 Sen, Debendranath 10, 26 Sen, Mrinal 12, 127 – 8, 132 – 5, 138, 140n5, 141n23 Sengupta, Rudraprasad 62 – 4, 67, 80 sericulture 168 – 70, 179n5 Shastri, Haraprasad 24 – 5, 36 Sher Afghan 66 – 7, 80 silk 12, 91, 167 – 70, 179nn4 – 5 Sollazzo, Guido 156 – 7 song 40 – 52, 53n6, 53nn9 – 10, 54n17, 54n20, 55n32, 56n36, 56n41, 56nn44 – 5, 74

Index  235 Sordi, Alberto 128, 130 – 1, 134, 137, 142n24 Strawinsky, Igor 41 – 2 students 8, 11 – 13, 20, 43 – 4, 50 – 1, 54n21, 60, 64, 66, 107 – 8, 110 – 14, 118 – 20, 122, 124n14, 124n21, 148, 152, 154 – 7, 181 – 2, 185, 191 – 2, 195 – 6, 199n21, 204 – 14, 216, 219, 220n17 Subah 77 – 8 Swadeshi 3, 11, 13, 107 – 8, 119, 202 – 6, 210, 213 Tabasso Volterra, Emanuele 147 – 8, 161n15 Tagore, Abanindranath 11, 107 – 8, 114, 119, 122, 123n9, 124n18 Tagore, Dwarkanath 91, 99, 102n7 Tagore, Jatindra Mohan 91, 99, 102n22 Tagore, Rabindranath 3, 7 – 8, 10 – 11, 14n3, 19, 26, 29, 32 – 7, 40 – 53, 53nn9 – 10, 54n23, 56n39, 60, 62, 114, 121 – 2, 181 – 2, 186 – 7, 194, 196, 198n11, 203 – 4, 206 – 7, 220n1, 220nn5 – 6, 229 Tasso, Torquato 10, 20, 27 – 30, 59, 184 terracotta 113, 122 thakurdalan 92 – 3, 95, 98 Tiretta, Edward 89, 101n5 Torre del Greco 12, 170 – 6, 179n10 – 11, 179n16 trade 1 – 2, 4, 12, 87, 90 – 1, 98, 100, 111 – 12, 146, 147 – 8, 150 – 2, 164 – 78, 179n9, 179n18, 210

trading networks 174, 176 – 7 tradition 10, 40 – 2, 46, 52, 53n4, 54n19, 59 – 60, 62, 65, 71 – 5, 81n3, 90, 92 – 3, 95 – 6, 102n12, 103n25, 108, 110, 113, 115, 124n21, 131, 134, 140n5, 140n12, 141n23, 148, 150, 165, 170, 173, 177, 196, 213, 216, 219, 229 translation 2, 4 – 5, 8, 10, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 40 – 2, 47, 51, 53n3, 54n22, 55n26, 59 – 60, 62 – 5, 68, 71, 75 – 6, 78, 81n4, 86, 102n8, 120, 184, 198n5, 198n9, 199n17 transnational 2 – 4, 11, 126 – 7, 129, 131 – 5, 138 – 9, 140n6 Trivedi, Ramendrasundar 23, 25 Tucci, Giuseppe 8, 12, 154 – 5, 161nn31 – 2, 192, 206 – 14, 220n4, 220n18, 221n21 unification (Italian) 2 – 3, 7, 100, 145, 177, 191 Upadhyay, Brahmabandhab 182, 187 – 9, 198n12 upward mobility 131, 133, 138 Vama 77 – 9 Vidyasagar, Ishwarchandra 21, 29 – 30 Visva-Bharati 121, 192, 206 – 7, 213 Vivekananda 25 Wellesley, Richard 88, 109, 123n9 world cinema 128 – 9, 132, 134 – 5, 139 zamindar 92 – 3, 95, 107, 111, 122