Chandrakumar Agarwalla–the Poet of Man

Chandrakumar Agarwalla-the poet of Man

The present age has seen the swelling of the camp of the worshippers of Man–understood independently of religion or God. Theoretically man was not disrespected or neglected: indeed, when he has been great and unusual, he has always shaken and even frightened his contemporaries. The thinkers and poets, too, eulogised this superman. But man as he is, with his hopes and disappointments, weals and woes, wisdom and folly, has never been looked upon as he is today. This mystical consideration of man began about the time of the French Revolution. Since then writers like Zola, Hamsun, Dostoievsky, Romain Rolland, Ernst Toller, have been instrumental in making people conscious of man as man. The new attitude no longer produces surprise; in many cases it is almost heartening to feel with the poet that

“The tiller of the soil is the great poet–
He it is who creates heaven on earth.”
–Prasannalal.

Writers are the precursors of revolutions, whether physical or mental. And it is perhaps the revolution in mental outlook which counts for most in the long run. The great revolutionary is he who can make the ignorant man of the cattle street, the wielder of the sod, knowing and conscious of his worth. Great is it to push one’s fellows into the path of greatness, rather than step on their shoulders and be high. Such was the mission of Vivekananda. The revolutionist’s assertion of manhood is vehement. He feels himself to be the symbol of the oppressed, the down-trodden:

“My song is an endless heat
Coming out of
A hundred burning losses, insults,
Humiliations.................”
–Ambikagiri Roy Chowdhury.

He says:

I am full of strength. Weakness I know not
My country’s ignorance, indigence, pitiableness,
Pettiness, the refuges for centuries, which
Have put up Himalayan resistance in the way
Of embellishing my nation with divine light,
Shall be flung off my breast..........
–Ambikagiri.

But the sober lover of man adopts a slightly different way of approach–he forgets himself so that he may speak of others, his ego loses itself in the glorification of his fellow-beings. An example of this is furnished by the late Assamese poet, Chandrakumar Agarwalla.

The Agarwalla family is noted for its patronage of literature and music. Chandrakumar’s father, Haribilash, is remembered gratefully for his publication of the Kirtanghosa, the sweet and most popular devotional book in Assam. Chandrakumar was born in 1867 at the beautiful and quiet town of Tezpur in North Assam. He prosecuted his higher studies at Calcutta, but left college without finishing his degree course because he did not have much respect for the degree. But before he left Calcutta he had interested himself in Assamiya culture and literature and had formed a memorable friendship with Laxminath Bezbarua, the greatest and most prolific writer of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the present century, and Hemchandra Goswami, also a noted writer and antiquarian. This friendship was instrumental in starting in Calcutta (1889) the monthly Jonaki as the mouthpiece of the Assamese students residing there. The Jonaki symbolized the romantic period of modern Assamese literature.

Chandrakumar later founded the New Press at Gauhati, started the paper Assamiya, and was at the birth of the older living monthly, the Barihi. So Chaildrakumar may be said to be one of the pioneers of journalism in Assam. He was noted for his love of comfort while he was a student in Calcutta, but when he returned home and engaged himself in looking after his family properties with their heavy liabilities, he changed his mode of living, became very simple, and earnest in the discharge of his duties. Indeed, honesty and a high sense of duty were the prominent traits of his personality till his death in 1937. Business and family worries took up his life but he was not untrue to the cause of literature. And though he did not produce much, his two thin volumes of verse, the Pratima and the Veenboragi have won a permanent place in Assamese literature.

Just as a quiet earnestness was the impression received by a contact with him, so lucidity and intensity of meaning are the distinguishing characteristics of his poetry. It is so simple that sometimes it approximates to prose; it is so full of meaning that it sometimes approximates to philosophy; but in most cases it is good poetry which can satisfy emotionally, and convince mentally. A master of racy Assamese, he could express his emotions with a great economy of words and naturalness of effect. In thisrespect his spirit is akin to the Assamese sanyasis or semi-sannyasis who used to sing Deh bicharor Geet, songs philosophico-religious, where can be found ideas ranging from the Atharva Veda to Baudha Tantric philosophy.

I will not go into the details of his poetry but only touch upon some of the features of his longest poem Veenboragi (the Sannyasi with his Veena). Here he touches on the theme of human life with its weal and woe, the aspiration of the heart for happiness and divinity, the oppression of man by man.

The world is full of woes, restlessness, deception and tyranny. These have enveloped the best side of humanity. The Veenboragi is in search of the true man:

The wealth the heart yearns for, is wild for,
This is That–in expectation of which
The heart is awake day and night–
The open-minded image of man
With charm of purity,
The vision beatific
Of consciousness and dream–
Which not even dream can compass.

If sad with the consciousness of his mission, he is not a pessimist, he has plenty of faith in man. Oh! that he could only wash away from his mind vices like hypocrisy, injustice, possessiveness, tyranny! The poet bursts out in prophetic fury:

Could I finger my lyre strings well
I would pull down the Himalayan peaks
Cover them with the churned-up sea,
Scatter down the stars of the skies–
Lacs in each handful,
Throw away the planets in clusters,
The floor of sin immerse
In the bottomless sea;
The vestige of the universe would then.
Only in the expanse of the ocean remain!

This cosmic emotion tones down into a Shelleyan aspiration:
Let honour and slight
be washed off the earth,
Let the sun-shine of a new creation
Sanctify all,
That there remain not sorrow, shame or fear,
A blessed world is that;
Then would play all day
The tune of joy my lyre has lost.

Like Shree Sankardev who sang five centuries ago:

The fourteen worlds in the mind are,
Sin in the mind, virtue there, hell too is there,
The mind it is which separates you from me.

the poet finds a solution to the search for happiness in his own heart:

The path straight to eternal happiness
Lies stretched through my heart,
Purchasing and selling things of the mind
Shall I rove through the world fair.
Thus discovering joy the Boragi goes on broad-casting the happy news to his suffering fellow-beings. And with the clearest ring he expresses the tenets of his worship of Man; he says that man can realize himself: further, this earth is his heaven:

The earth excels heaven itself,
It is man’s own home;
Man is the god of this world,
He the essence of things.

He wants to assert divinity in man so that he can lend divinity to the dead idols:

To instil life, to culture life-
Make it your body’s mission,
Then at each breath of yours will stir
The dead idols that lie scattered.

Here, in his attempt to prove the divinity of man, lies his value as a poet, as a poet of the new order. Here he is in line with the young revolutionists, the communists. If the revolutionary seems to forget the divinity in man, he asserts the dignity of man and his desire not to be oppressed and cheated. He also has faith in a bright future for his fellow beings:

True is this daily march for light,
True is,
Comrade,
The victory over darkness.
-Devakanta

The iniquities of the world, the social conflicts, are an ungrateful subject for the poet; the poet’s merit is proved if his poetry does not turn out to be propaganda and conundrums.