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Title:
The Afterlife of a Devotional Mystic: Chaitanya and
Bengal, 1880-1900
Where
& When: January 29, 2008
341 Eggers Hall
12.30 pm
Type
of Activity: Speaker
Speaking: Varuni Bhatia, Department
of Religion, Columbia University
Summary:
On 27th
March, 1899 Chaitanya
Janmotvasa celebrations were
held in Calcutta, possibly for the first time on such a
large scale in the public space. The organization of which
spearheaded the celebrations was the newly established
Gauranga
Samaj, which worked in close tandem
with the already existing network of
Hari-Sabhas in planning and preparing
for the festival. Sishir Kumar
Ghosh, proprietor of a prominent anti-colonial English
newspaper, the
Amrita
Bazar Patrika
initiated the idea, and his
Vaishnava mouthpiece, the
Vishnupriya
Patrika played an important
role in publicizing this purportedly older and popular
festival. The festival was held publicly, at
Beadon Square; the
kirtan processions, however,
it was reported, winded all over
Beadon Street up to
Chitpur Road. The event was widely
reported in prominent Bengali language newspapers of the
day, including the
Somprakash and the
Basumati. This paper is an
enquiry into the celebration of a religious festival in the
public sphere lying in the heart of the native quarters of
the imperial city of Calcutta. This is an attempt to situate
the celebrations in the historical context of Bengal and
Calcutta in the decade of the 1890s.
Sponsorship:
The South Asia Center
