UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 132 of 147

Correct — B, Dinbandhu Mitra.

The play is Nil Darpan, "The Indigo Mirror". It was composed by Dinbandhu Mitra — usually transliterated Dinabandhu Mitra — and published anonymously at Dhaka in 1860; the 1861 English edition named its translator only as "A Native".

It puts on stage what the indigo system did to a Bengal peasant household: the advance that could not be refused, indigo forced onto the best land, and the planter's men enforcing the contract. It reached print beside the indigo agitation of 1859-60.

The mark here lies in a single separation: the author, the translator and the publisher of Nil Darpan are three different men. Mitra wrote it; Michael Madhusudan Dutt is generally credited with the English version; Rev. James Long published that version and was tried for libel in 1861.

• (a)
  Rabindranath Tagore — Tagore was born in 1861, so he belongs to the generation after this play was composed and printed. Recognising a name as the great modern Bengali writer is not a route to the authorship of every famous Bengali text.

  He is the right answer to Gitanjali, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, and to the authorship of the song later adopted as India's national anthem.

• (c)
  Bankim Chandra Chatterji — Bankim was writing Bengali in the same decades, which puts him close to this play in time, but his standing rests on the novel rather than the stage — his first Bengali novel, Durgeshnandini, appeared in 1865, after Nil Darpan was printed.

  He is the right answer to Anandamath (1882), the novel that carries Vande Mataram, and to the founding of the journal Bangadarshan in 1872.

• (d)
  Akshay Kumar Dutt — Akshay Kumar Datta worked in expository prose — rationalist essays on nature, society and religious sects written in the Brahmo circle of Calcutta — rather than in drama about the indigo districts.

  He is the right answer to the editorship of Tattwabodhini Patrika, the Tattwabodhini Sabha's journal, which he edited from 1843.

Indigo was a plantation crop grown for export under contract. A planter advanced money to a ryot, and the advance bound the cultivator to sow indigo on part of his holding at a price the planter set.

Because indigo exhausted the land and paid badly, the arrangement held together through debt and force rather than profit.

Nil Darpan is the literary record of that system. It matters as evidence: a Bengali play, written from inside the districts where the coercion happened, that carried the ryot's case into print and then, in translation, into English.

• Nil Darpan was written by Dinabandhu Mitra and published anonymously at Dhaka in 1860, the author's name omitted from the title page.
• Its subject is the coercion of Bengal's indigo ryots by European planters through advances, forced sowing and physical enforcement.
• The English translation is generally attributed to Michael Madhusudan Dutt; the 1861 English edition credits the translator only as "A Native".
• Rev. James Long arranged publication of the English version and was convicted of libel in 1861, fined one thousand rupees and imprisoned for a month.
• Kaliprasanna Sinha paid Long's fine.
• Indigo cultivators in Nadia and neighbouring Bengal districts refused to sow indigo in 1859-60, the agitation known as the Nil Bidroha.
• The government appointed an Indigo Commission in 1860, which took evidence on the planters' system.
• The Hindoo Patriot under Harish Chandra Mukherjee argued the ryots' case in the Calcutta press.
• Dinabandhu Mitra's other plays include Nabin Tapaswini, Sadhabar Ekadasi and Jamai Barik.
• Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861; Bankim Chandra Chatterji's Durgeshnandini appeared in 1865.

• Three men attach to this one play — author, translator, publisher. A stem naming any one of those roles can be answered with another man's name if the roles are not kept apart.
• The stem's 1858-1859 is the period of composition; the Dhaka printing is dated 1860. A date question turns on which of the two it is asking for.
• Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Dinabandhu Mitra were writing Bengali in the same decades; the separation to hold is genre — Bankim's reputation rests on novels, Mitra's on plays.
• Tagore's birth in 1861 places him after this play; treating the most famous Bengali name as the default answer puts him on a text he could not have written.
• The Bengal indigo agitation of 1859-60 and the Champaran satyagraha of 1917 both concern indigo but are separate events, in different provinces, sixty years apart.
• The play's grievance belongs to the indigo cultivators, the ryots. Some stems loosely say "indigo planters", who were the European contractors on the other side of the dispute.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The English translation of Nil Darpan was published by a missionary who was prosecuted for libel in 1861. Who was he?

  • (a)Rev. James Long
  • (b)Michael Madhusudan Dutt
  • (c)Rev. Alexander Duff
  • (d)Rev. William Carey
  Answera — Rev. James Long arranged and circulated the English edition, was convicted of libel in 1861, fined one thousand rupees and imprisoned for a month.

  Michael Madhusudan Dutt is credited with the translation itself, not its publication, and he was not a missionary. Alexander Duff was a Church of Scotland and, after 1843, Free Church of Scotland missionary whose Bengal work was in education.

  William Carey, of Serampore, died in 1834, well before the play was written.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The refusal of indigo cultivators to sow indigo in 1859-60, known as the Nil Bidroha, was centred in:

  • (a)Champaran district of Bihar
  • (b)the talukdari belt of Awadh
  • (c)Nadia and neighbouring districts of Bengal
  • (d)the Malabar coast
  Answerc — the refusal began in the Bengal indigo districts, with Nadia at its centre, and it is the agitation Nil Darpan speaks to.

  Champaran is indigo country too, but its famous struggle is Gandhi's satyagraha of 1917 against the tinkathia system, sixty years later. Awadh's agrarian conflicts were between talukdars, landlords and tenants, not over indigo contracts. The Malabar coast's peasant risings concerned tenancy under janmi landlords.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following works was written by Dinabandhu Mitra?

  • (a)Durgeshnandini
  • (b)Sadhabar Ekadasi
  • (c)Kapalkundala
  • (d)Bishabriksha
  Answerb — Sadhabar Ekadasi is a play by Dinabandhu Mitra, whose dramatic work also includes Nabin Tapaswini and Jamai Barik.

  The other three are novels by Bankim Chandra Chatterji: Durgeshnandini, his first Bengali novel, in 1865; Kapalkundala soon after; and Bishabriksha later. Grouping them together is the point of the question — one dramatist against a novelist's list.