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Indeed, he reformed and developed Bangla prose not just by his textbooks, but also by his other writings. Until he published his Vetalpavchavingshati in 1847, the Bangla prose style, created by the pundits of Fort William College or by Rammohun Roy, was archaic, artificial and barely adequate for communicating information, but it fell far short of what can be termed as literary prose — a prose style suited to writing literature. Before him, Bangla prose had the vocabulary for communicating information, but little beauty, and lacked smoothness and lucidity. Vidyasagar discovered collocation, modified the sentence structure and established the correlation between the subject and the verb, and the verb and the object. He, thus, created a style hitherto unknown in Bangla prose. He also discovered the relation between breath-pause and meaning-pause and made a synthesis of them, and helped the reader find these poses by using punctuation marks, particularly commas, at the right place. Previously, only Akshay Kumar Datta had used English punctuation marks; in Bangla, there were just full-stops and double full-stops prior to him.
However, Vidyasagar did not write in one single style; for example, the style he followed in his textbooks was, of course, different from the one he used in his literary works, and the style seen in his anonymous writings was yet another — one of sarcasm and wit.
According to some contemporary writers, Vidyasagar was little more than a translator and textbook writer. However, on a closer analysis of his works, one would probably differ with them. In his very first literary work, Vetalpanchvingshati (1847), Vidyasagar amply proved that he was just retelling the stories of Vetal, rather than translating them. He improvised and made them suitable for the modern reader leaving the vulgarity of the original; and thus, created his own version of Vetal. His Shakuntala (1854), again, was far from the original by Kalidasa. His Shakuntala and her two companions appear to be Bengali, as does his Sita in Sitar Banabas (1860). Even when he translated Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, he adapted it for the Bengali readers and retold it in the form of a narrative. Moreover, his language style, including his wit and humour, makes both these books seem original. Unlike Sanskrit most scholars of his time, who were mostly traditional in their social outlook and religious beliefs, Vidyasagar was an agent of change and liberalism. He realised that without modernising traditional mores and reforming from within the family, society could never advance.
Vidyasagar was saddened by the distress of child widows who were at that time treated inhumanly, and started writing in favour of their remarriage. His first article on this subject appeared in Bengal Spectator (April 1842) when he had just come out of Sanskrit College. In order to raise social consciousness towards the deplorable condition of widows, particularly child widows, he published his first book in January 1855 and the second in October that year. Later, he also wrote a couple of books on the subject anonymously attacking those Sanskrit pundits who objected to his ideas.
Alongside justifying remarriage of widows by putting forward arguments from ancient shastras, he started a movement for legalising widow remarriage for which he organised a signature campaign and sent a petition to the government on 4 October 1855 asking it to pass it into a law. Later, twenty-two other petitions followed, some from other parts of India, and had more than five thousand signatures against child marriage. On the contrary, conservative Hindus sent in twenty-eight petitions bearing more than fifty-five thousand signatures, urging the government not to pass such a law and thereby interfere with the religion and culture of the natives. Even though the balance was in favour of the conservatives, the government passed an act legalising widow remarriage in July 1857. In spite of this moral victory for the liberals, the Act had only a limited success. In the face of strong opposition and even violence, Vidyasagar remarried the first widow in December that year to one of his colleagues at Sanskrit College.
Boosted with his success in legalising widow remarriage, Vidyasagar petitioned to the government for the abolition of Kulin polygamy and, later, early marriage. However, the Sepoy Mutiny (1857) had made government cautious about hurting the sentiment of the common people. Thus, no Act was passed abolishing either Kulin polygamy or child marriage, but he is still remembered for his liberal outlook.
If Rammohun Roy played the role of the first humanist pundit in Bengal by translating, reinterpreting and publishing old shastras, and thus started the process of the Bengal Renaissance, Vidyasagar was the second. Whereas the former did it mainly for his campaign against Sati, the latter did it for the remarriage of child widows, stopping polygamy, introducing female education and for improving the condition of the down-trodden in society, particularly women. Moreover, he translated from the Mahabharata, Ramayana and from Kalidas into Bangla not to return to ancient India, but to improve the literary tastes of the emerging educated class. The literature he translated was mostly that of gods and goddesses, such as Rama and Sita, but he transformed these characters into adorable modern human beings.
He turned into a living legend for his personality and character. At a time when everyone in society was expected to follow the trodden path and never to challenge traditional values and morals, he established a unique example of individuality and independence. Not only did he want to go his own way, but he also had the moral courage to practice it. When he organised the movement for remarriage of child widows, he ignored the hostility and threats from traditional Hindus, and nothing could detour him from his determination. While other supporters of widow remarriage lost their enthusiasm within a year or so, and broke their promise to fund it, as a lonely soldier he went on fighting the conservatives and arranging marriages of widows. He had the courage to marry his only son to a widow, and then, for something else, even to disown him. Although there were many rich people in Bengal at that time and he was just a member of the educated middle class, he earned the name as the greatest philanthropist of his day and became a role-model to everyone, including his enemies.
Vidyasagar died a lonely man on 29 July 1891.
Bibliography: Gopal Haldar, Vidyasagar Rachana Sangraha, 3 Volumes, Pashchim Banga Niraksharata Durikaran Samity, Kolkata, 1972; BN Bandyopadhyay, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, 5th Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Kolkata, 1955; B Ghosh, Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, Reprint, Orient Longman, Kolkata, 1993; A Tripathi, Vidyasagar: A Traditional Modernizer, Reprint, Punashcha, Kolkata, 1998. n
