"Scott of Bengal": Examining the European Legacy in the Historical Novels of Bankimchandra Chatterjee

It is generally agreed that the novel is of European origin and that it was imported into non-European countries through colonial contact. While acknowledging this European precedence, it is important to also acknowledge the unique ways in which non-European authors indigenized the form to respond to the needs of their contemporary readers who were their intended audience. The works of the nineteenth-century Indian novelist Bankimchandra Chatterjee are a case in point. This dissertation focuses on the role the historical novels of Bankim performed in determining Indian identities at a particular juncture in Indian colonial history. A comparative study with selected novels of Sir Walter Scott, the premier historical novelist of Europe, helps illustrate the singularity of Bankim's task; Scott and Bankim occupied quite different worlds and their works serve as metaphors of this difference. As the first successful novelist of India, Bankim took on the task of invoking history to create a national identity for a people who, he felt, did not have one. This identity had to be imagined through complex negotiations of race, religion, and gender, each of which required constant redefining. Bankim's choice to define Indian history with a strong Hindu bias created an ambivalent and often hostile space for the non-Hindu participants of Indian history. This dissertation examines that space and the role assigned to the antithesis of the Muslim "other," the ideal Hindu. It also studies the role of the Hindu woman in Bankim's historical novels. The nation is imagined as a woman and the many dimensions of that role add richness to Bankim's texts.