Volume II, Issue VI, July 2026
Volume-II, Issue-VI, July, 2026 |
Received: 19.06.2026 | Accepted: 27.07.2026 | ||
Published Online: 31.07.2026 | Page No: | ||
DOI: 10.69655/atmadeep.vol.2.issue.06W. | |||
রামানন্দ
চট্টোপাধ্যায় ও ভারতীয় জাতীয়তাবাদের পুনর্পাঠ: আধুনিকতার ঊর্ধ্বে এক
জ্ঞানতাত্ত্বিক অন্বেষণ
ড. আরনা
মুখোপাধ্যায়, সহকারী অধ্যাপক ও বিভাগীয় প্রধান,
বাংলা বিভাগ, রামানন্দ
কলেজ, পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, ভারত
ড.
অর্পণ ভট্টাচার্য, সহকারী অধ্যাপক ও বিভাগীয় প্রধান,
রাষ্ট্রবিজ্ঞান বিভাগ, রামানন্দ
কলেজ, পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, ভারত |
Ramananda Chattopadhyay and a Re-reading of Indian Nationalism: An Epistemological Exploration Beyond Modernity Dr. Arna Mukhopadhyay, Assistant Professor & Head, Department of Bengali, Ramananda College, West Bengal, India Dr. Arpan Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor & Head, Department of Political Science, Ramananda College, West Bengal, India | ||
ABSTRACT | ||
This paper revisits the intellectual legacy
of Ramananda Chattopadhyay (1865–1943), founder-editor of Prabasi and The
Modern Review, on the occasion of his 161st birth anniversary, arguing that he
resists easy categorisation as merely an editor or journalist. Reading
Ramananda through a hermeneutic circle, the essay situates him as an ‘epistemic
individual’ whose ontology must be approached layer by layer, much like peeling
an onion. The discussion engages critically with theories of
nationalism—Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Ernest Gellner’s
modernisation thesis, Partha Chatterjee’s reading of Bankimchandra, and Sudipta
Kaviraj’s scepticism about the social base of Bengali print culture—to ask
whether literary nationalism in colonial Bengal, exemplified by Bankimchandra
Chattopadhyay and Dinabandhu Mitra, could genuinely ground a mass national
consciousness. Against this backdrop, Rabindranath Tagore’s shift from ‘jati’
to ‘swadesh’ and his programme of ‘atmashakti’ are read as an alternative, non-statist
model of nation-building. The paper then turns to Ramananda’s own contribution:
his rationalist and critical temperament, comparable to the Socratic elenchus
and the dialogic tradition of the Chandogya Upanishad; his confrontation with
Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee over university funding; his refusal to be confined
within sectarian Brahmo identity despite deep engagement with Ramakrishna and Vivekananda; his internationalism at the League of
Nations in 1927; and his prescient essay ‘The Clash of Two Cultures’, read
alongside Samuel Huntington’s later thesis. The paper concludes that
Ramananda’s vision of India’s ‘Vishwarup Darshan’—a cosmopolitan,
self-critical, and ethically grounded nationalism—offers a valuable alternative
pathway for addressing contemporary cultural and democratic crises in India. | ||
Keyword:
|