Against Imitation:Anti-Colonial Caricatures in Basantak, or the Bengali Punch
In 1874, Prannath Dutta published the satirical periodical Basantak to undermine obscenity laws and caricature the rational, militant masculinity of British administrators by depicting them as venal and incompetent to administer British India. Basantak's farces draw on various Indian literary and visual forms and genres. The jester-like omniscient narrator called Basantak—modeled after the cultivated iconoclast, Mr. Punch—displays an all-consuming cynicism. This article examines various imagetextual narratives, caricatures, and cartoons of British officials Stuart Hogg, Richard Temple, and Robert Phayre through which Basantak lampoons not only the childlike Englishmen but also their inane laws.
The influence of the British illustrated periodical Punch on the nineteenth-century Bengali satirical magazine Basantak was indisputable. Basantak's zestful zaniness can be traced back to the illustrated French magazine Le Charivari, founded by Charles Philipon and Honoré Daumier, which published political cartoons, caricatures, and reviews from 1832 to 1937. In 1841, Ebenezer Landells and Henry Mayhew used Le Charivari as a model to launch their Punch, or The London Charivari. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the jocose progenies of Punch produced an enormous circulation among the English-educated colonial literati in British India. The Delhi Sketch Book, launched in 1850 and owned by the Englishman, was the first Punch-inspired Anglo-Indian magazine that sought to amuse its readers by caricaturing the British social lifestyle.1 In the 1870s, Prannath Dutta (1840–88) edited and published two more Punch-inspired illustrated magazines from Calcutta: the Indian Charivari (1873) in English and Basantak (1874) in Bengali.2 Prannath Dutta published Basantak as a response to two crucial moments in Indian periodical history. Basantak was a reaction to the establishment of the Society for the Suppression of Obscenity in India in 1873, which strove to curb the freedom of the press.3 It also simultaneously responded to the derogatory depictions of Indians in what Tanya Agathocleous calls the "Indian Anglosphere," which included English-language periodicals produced by the Anglo-Indian community, English-educated Indians, and Britons.4 [End Page 1]
This article examines Basantak's undermining of the rationalist, militant masculinity of British officials in India. I trace how the magazine deploys imagetextual farces to render British colonial administrators in India "effete," thereby inverting the political accusation of effeminacy directed by the British against the "soft-bodied little people" of Bengal.5 Basantak's critique lies in its keen observation of how British colonial rule transformed cultural and physical differences into a justification for their domination. Indeed, Basantak excoriates not only British political figures and their facile laws but also their gross maladministration and corrosive racial policies during a period of extreme political upheaval. For example, the Bihar Famine (1873–74), the Third Anglo-Ashanti War (1873–74), conflict over the Inner Line Permit in the Naga Hills (1873), the establishment of the Hogg Market (1874), and the Baroda Crisis (1874–75) are just a few of the political events amid which Basantak situates itself. Examining the magazine's various imagetextual narratives within these historical events, I argue that Basantak anticlimactically reduces the militant masculine dignity of British officials by depicting Stuart Hogg, Richard Temple, and Robert Phayre—the metonymic imperial representatives—as victims of their own machinations who are unfit to rule India.
The article is divided into three sections. The first section introduces Basantak through its numerous titular wordplays, puns, and literary themes, rendering it anything but imitative of Punch. The second section foregrounds the different traditions of indigenous satire, stock characters, and rhetorical devices that Basantak draws from. Here, I examine the underlying caste, class, and gender politics in Basantak. In the third section, I study three specific objects of Basantak's satire: the effeminate Bengali babu; Robert Phayre, the supposed victim of an attempted poisoning in the Baroda Crisis; and Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg, chairman of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation between 1863 and 1877, who founded the Hogg Market or New Market in Calcutta in 1874. While extant scholarship on Basantak neglects its pictorial elements by prioritizing the textual components, I study imagetextual representations to demonstrate how these caricatures undermined colonial authority by revealing the instability of colonial gender performances.6 This article is thus situated in the growing body of scholarship on nineteenth-century Indian periodicals while also urging it in a new direction: toward a reappraisal of the rich and subversive imagetextual world of Indian-language periodicals.7 These periodicals, sometimes not as well-archived as English-language periodicals and thus difficult to find, read, and locate historically, nonetheless narrate a version of colonialism that a study of only English-language periodicals is unable to account for.8 [End Page 2]
Basantak: An Introduction
Basantak's polemical satire of imperial politics makes it one of the most opprobrious and humorous periodicals in the rich polyglot print culture of colonial India. Its twenty-four issues were published in two volumes from January 31, 1874, to September 30, 1876 (figure 1). The magazine was presided over by Basantak, a figure who, like Mr. Punch, served as the narrator and the mouthpiece of the editors belonging to a disaffected Brahmin caste.9 In the competitive periodical market of the 1870s, Basantak was not the only Punch-inspired Bengali magazine. There were at least two other satirical magazines—Bidūṣak (1870) and Harabōlā Bhār (1874)—that equally imitated the caricaturesque pictorial style of Punch (figure 2). Harabōlā Bhār was published a few weeks before Basantak. On January 9, 1874 (25 Poush 1280), the bilingual newspaper Amrita Bazar Patrika printed a Bengali advertisement announcing that it had received a quirky magazine called Harabōlā Bhār: "We have received a curious illustrated monthly magazine called 'Harabōlā Bhār.' It has four humorous portraits of everyday life. The images are beautifully engraved. The enlarged nose found in the ludicrous pictures of the English Punch is also seen throughout this magazine. However, Bengalis are yet to fathom the mystery of his long nose."10 Amrita Bazar Patrika fails to appreciate the humor of Mr. Punch's long nose, which has sneaked into a Bengali periodical for Bengali readers. Were Bengali readers not aware of the anti-Semitic caricatures of nineteenth-century English newspapers or the drawings of old witches from European fables?11 It is difficult to ascertain if Bengali readers were familiar with these stereotypical iconographies or not, but Amrita Bazar Patrika's inability to interpret the caricatural dimensions of the nose as humorous isolates the style as an artistic variant introduced from outside Bengali print culture, through English magazines. Besides this obsession over long noses, periodicals like Harabōlā Bhār and Basantak printed other humorous illustrations of everyday life with occasional scathing reviews on misinformation and sloppy journalism. For example, in the first issue of Basantak, the eponymous narrator reprimands Indian Mirror, an Indian English newspaper, for printing a piece of news claiming that Amrita Bazar Patrika has published a "Punch magazine"—that is, Harabōlā Bhār.12 Basantak mistakes this as a reference to his own publication and lashes out at Indian Mirror, declaring that the editors of Basantak publish the monthly "Punch" magazine at "Kolkata, Garanhata no. 336" and that the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika has nothing to do with it.13 Basantak's censure of Indian Mirror's journalistic inaccuracy inadvertently reflects on its own slipshod reporting in failing to check the original advertisement printed by Amrita Bazar Patrika. Nevertheless, at the end of [End Page 3]
Cover page, Basantak 1, no. 1 (1874).
[End Page 4]
Cover page, Harabōlā Bhār 1, no. 1 (1874).
January 1874, the editors of Basantak might not have been aware of the recently published Harabōlā Bhār, a competitor already tapping into the market for illustrated satirical magazines in Bengal. Unfortunately, very few pages from Harabōlā Bhār are now extant.14
Basantak differs from Harabōlā Bhār stylistically and pictorially as it abstains from imitating Punch's prose style or its long-nosed narrator. We have already seen how Amrita Bazar Patrika pointed out that the mindless imitation of Mr. Punch's signature nose had no cultural appeal to the Bengali sense of humor. The editors of Basantak might have supported this observation. Therefore, Basantak stylistically disassociates itself from Harabōlā Bhār, albeit unknowingly, by distorting the shape of the head rather than the nose in all its characters. In volume 1, issue 3, the narrator explains that the disproportionately enlarged head in some illustrations is meant to help readers recognize the person being caricatured: "If we draw figures without enlarged heads, how else will you identify them?"15 The illustrator endeavors to remain faithful to the prevalent comic device in Bengali print culture—the familiar enlarged head rather than the unfamiliar enlarged nose. The caricatures of Girindranath Dutta (1841–1908) have a sense of urgency embedded in their physiognomic accuracy and [End Page 5] topical specificity. These caricatured figures are from different walks of life, races, classes, genders, castes, occupations, and regions, and they are all Basantak's enemies. Every imagetextual illustration lampoons a specific event between 1874 and 1876. In its farces, Basantak claims to be more forgiving and modest than its scurrilous contemporaries, even though in unfiltered argots it expresses its frustrations against inept governance, anti-obscenity laws, sycophantic English-educated Bengalis (known as babus), taxation and infrastructure reforms, political factionalism, the laxity of its own subscribers, and every aspect of quotidian life.
In cases of news reporting or serialized farces in Basantak, verbal texts take priority over the image and always precede the illustrations. Basantak first textually transcribes political events and then offers a visual dramatization of selected reporting. The text and image then form an association through hierarchical priority. The unfolding verbal text—encompassing news satire, farce, burlesque, closet drama, newspaper criticism, and mock-epic poems—dictates what illustrations must be provided. The process is anti-ekphrastic: the editor provides illustrations based on what is already present in the prose or verse, and complementary illustrations may or may not be present for all characters, episodes, or settings introduced in that text.16 Thus, caricatures of mythological themes and British administrators depict clear references to already known stories, which allow readers to fill in the missing background narrative. In autonomous caricatures and cartoons that include no textual narrativization, the relationship between image and text becomes codependent; that is, they coproduce meaning nonhierarchically. In such cases, image and text are sometimes complementary, often contradictory, but never stable.17 These layered and complex imagetextual assemblages in Basantak create a rich visual cornucopia of historical events and their minor participants.
In the first issue, Basantak introduces himself by playing on the polysemic and esoteric registers of his name. The Bengali word "basantak" invokes discourses of Hindu feudalism, epidemics, orature, and Indian religio-secular literature. The term signifies "springtime" (Basanta), which coincides with the Hindu calendar months of Phālgun (mid-February to mid-March) and Caitra (mid-March to mid-April). During spring, religious festivals abound in Eastern India, which include Holi or Dol (the festival of colors), Saraswatīpuja (honoring the Hindu goddess of music, knowledge, and art), and various Hindu folk festivals associated with Lord Shiva, like gājan and chaḍak.18 These spring festivals have origins in Indian devotional and mythological literature that are consistently invoked throughout Basantak for satirical effects. For example, Holi symbolically celebrates the feats of Varaha, Lord Vishnu's boar avatar, who defeated the demon Hiraṇyākṣa and rescued the Earth (Bhūdēbī) from the cosmic ocean.19 [End Page 6]
Bihar Famine of 1874. Basantak 1, no. 2 (1874): 30.
Basantak acknowledges this mythical, chimerical influence of Varaha in the illustration titled "Kalikatar Varaha Avatar" (The Boar Avatar of Calcutta), which caricatures Sir Stuart Hogg for embezzlement (I return to this image later in the essay). Thus, seeking to amuse its Bengali readers, Basantak deploys the mock-epic for unbridled burlesque.
However, Basantak refuses to romanticize the tropes of mythical spring, for he is aware of the darker and mortal side of this time of the year. The mismanagement of resources during the 1873 Bihar famine and widespread epidemics under Lord Northbrook (the Viceroy of India, 1872–76), George Campbell (Lt. Governor of Bengal, 1871–74), and Richard Temple (Lt. Governor of Bengal, 1874–77) is not something Basantak wishes to forgive easily (figure 3). Springtime was notorious for unleashing its seasonal epidemic diseases like smallpox (basantawga), chickenpox (pani basanta), and measles (hām basanta), which exacerbated the mortality rate in a perpetually famine-stricken country under British colonial occupation. Ralph Nicholas and David Arnold show that these seasonal diseases existed in India for over two thousand years and were referred to as māsurikā in ancient medical treatises.20 These diseases were identified [End Page 7] by copperish globular pustules that erupted all over the body, enervating it with fever, pain, and burning sensations.21 Spring, therefore, signifies not only vernal rejuvenation in indigenous festivities but also a state of transience: a colony in transition under British administration.22 For Basantak, spring is a time of mythical reenactments when he must rescue his country from the abyss of imperial corruption, just as Varaha rescues the earth. Spring is an emotion, a perpetual state of being, and a time of herculean struggle against corrupt practices, complicities, collusions, famines, and epidemics. Within this theme of transience, Basantak's anti-colonial satires are directed against the corrupt practices of British rule, covering the land like a perpetual plague.
Basantak borrows literary tropes and stock figures from the long tradition of Bengali satires as well as from Indian aesthetic tradition to excoriate not only the Englishmen (sahebs) and their worldly manners but also the English-educated Bengalis—the sycophantic, effete babus—who became the multifaceted cynosure of nineteenth-century Bengali social life. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the babu metamorphosed into a fecund trope of caricature, ridicule, and parody (figure 4).23 Throughout its twenty-four issues, Basantak uses this trope of the effete, anglicized Bengali as a satirical foil against which it pits the occasionally admirable manly Brits, the corrupt Hogg, the juvenile Robert Phayre, and the narrator—a poor but upper-caste Brahmin man ("gariba brāhmaṇa lācāra").24 This juxtaposition produces episodes of bawdy slapstick comedy. Like effeminacy—an urban phenomenon—satire, too, is inexplicably tied to the privileged lives of the upper-caste and upper-class city dwellers caught in the matrix of commerce, family, and fantasy.25 Basantak allays the status anxieties of the English-educated, westernized denizens of Kalikata (Calcutta), who remain a quintessential product of colonial modernity.
Basantak's anti-colonial satire results from ribald multilingualism that plays on contemporaneous stereotypes of colonized Bengalis and English colonizers. This play becomes more complicated as Basantak depicts the instability of the colonizer/colonized binary when people move to occupy different spaces of privilege and power. The satires and farces in Basantak are polyglottal and multilingual. They are interspersed with English, Urdu, Hindustani, and Sanskrit proverbs and idiomatic expressions. They draw on contemporary slang, cultural jokes, and other literary and visual devices from rural folklore and classical Sanskrit literature. This potpourri of literary traditions enables the periodical to deploy satirical commentaries through contemporary jokes and insults familiar to Bengali readers. The jester-like omniscient narrator, Basantak—modeled after, but significantly differing from, the cultivated iconoclast Mr. Punch—exhibits his polyglottal authority and literary adeptness through a compelling display of bathos (bhābābarōha), irony (śleṣ), mock praises (byājastuti), periphra sis (atiśaẏōkti), and other rhetorical devices.26 [End Page 8]
The urban babu is mistaken for a sawng due to his attire. Basantak 2, no. 11 (1876): 199.
[End Page 9]
Basantak's Satirical Lineage and a Case against Imitation
The homodiegetic narrator, Basantak, combines two stock characters from Sanskrit literature to satirize contemporary Bengali society. He is a combination of kathak (the explicator of the Puranas, typically a Brahmin) and bidusak (the comic friend of the protagonist in classical Sanskrit drama).27 As kathak, Basantak informs the reader of his economic and caste precarities. While tracing his literary descent, Basantak writes that he is neither a sawng nor a bhnar, referring to the droll clowns and harlequin-like figures used as comic relief in rural folk dramas.28 Nineteenth-century Bengali social farces were an offshoot of folk drama, heavily religious in their theme and context, and adapted freely from the rich corpus of Sanskrit religious literature. Through performances based on religious texts, folk dramas acquired communalist fervor as they sought to mobilize Hindus against other coreligionists who prohibited public singing and performances.29 Basantak's apparent refusal to be associated with a sawng or a bhnar emerges from their marginal stature in folk drama and the lower-caste position of those who organized these public processions and played these roles.
Sawng processions were an intrinsic part of nineteenth-century religious festivals, weddings, and other satirical entertainments.30 People flocked in thousands to see these sawngs, who decorated themselves with facial greasepaint and cracked sexual and scatological jokes.31 The processions were organized mainly by lower-caste communities of fishermen and bronze-metalworkers who employed this art form to protest against the hegemony of the Hindu upper castes and classes, the stifling laws of the Brits, and Hindu religious bigotry.32 Therefore, Basantak and sawngs are born adversaries within the Hindu caste hierarchy. By preferring (Brahminical) stock characters over lower-caste sawngs and bhnars, Basantak reestablishes the kind of satire, persona, and rhetoric suitable for the upper-caste colonial elites to effectively articulate disappointments and voice anti-colonial complaints.
Basantak's caste prejudices, in his ideal style of satire, manifest in his vicious attack on Kristo Das Pal (né Krishna Das Pal, 1838–84), the editor of the English weekly Hindoo Patriot. Basantak's literary jousting and perpetual disagreement with Pal take a more sinister turn in his pictorial representations. Pal was of the "telee" (télī or oilpresser) caste.33 Basantak illustrates him in all black, resembling a sawng with greasepaint—a pictorial peculiarity not evident for any other Bengali figure in the periodical (figure 5). The entirely black caricatures reflect Pal's lower-caste identity and hint at the prevalent color prejudice among upper-caste Indians. Basantak mentions that the upper castes do not accept water from the télī caste; therefore, Pal does not qualify as a bhadralōk (genteel, civil).34 [End Page 10]
Kristo Das Pal is portrayed as a sawng at the center in all black, right below Sir Richard Temple. Basantak 2, no. 8 (1876): 130.
[End Page 11]
Basantak's disaffected casteism becomes apparent in this mocking rhetorical question: "Who is civilized among the oilpresser, pan-seller, goldsmith, farmer, and vintner?" (télī, tāmlī, sonārabēnē, cāṣā ō śuṛīder madhyē kē bhadralōk).35 Basantak does not consider members of these lower castes civilized. The unusual caricatures and Basantak's disparaging casteist commentaries belie a sense of uneasiness in seeing Kristo Das Pal rise to a station of social import within the upper-caste-dominated Hindu society.36 Basantak further writes, "If it were about brahmins, vaidyas, or kayasthas [upper castes], I could have resolved the issue as a brahmin myself … I fail to fathom the issues of oilpressers, pān-sellers, farmers, and washers."37 Basantak participates in the rampant partisanship against the lower castes in Calcutta by maliciously undermining Pal's social status and lampooning his political allegiance to Stuart Hogg. Such ideological prejudices were evident within the native intermediaries of the broader anti-imperial project.
Therefore, Basantak wants the reader to refrain from associating him with a sawng, a bhnar, or even Kristo Das Pal, for he identifies more with the upper-caste Brahmin literary comic figure, the bidusak. No wonder Basantak's anti-imperial and casteist satires are the learned jibes of a Brahmin jester! Basantak writes that in the old days, the king always treated the bidusak as a close friend and an indispensable part of court life. Apart from entertaining people at court, he was vested with a power far beyond that of the appointed ministers. He dared to interfere in royal matters, had an informal attitude toward men in power (including the king), and cured people's delusions while prancing around like a clown with an insouciant charm.38 Basantak tells his readers that, like the king, they should keep him by their side and confide in him their problems, for he must entertain the weary laity just as he must rebuke the follies of the rich and powerful.39
As kathak or explicator of Indian lore, Basantak introduces the tropes of the helpless old Brahmin ("gariba brāhmaṇa lācāra") and kaliyuga, or the end of times.40 As a Brahmin priest, Basantak wears a sacred thread around his neck and a traditional loincloth. He carries a flame on a wick for his evening prayer in one hand and a puthi (sheaves of paper tied with a string) to recite from in the other. Basantak says that he has been named after basanta pañcamī (or śrīpañcamī), the day of the ritualistic celebration of goddess Saraswatī and the commencement of spring.41 Pañcamī is the fifth day of the Hindu lunisolar calendar, where pañc means five, and pañcama means fifth. Syllabically, pañc resonates closely with Punch. Does Basantak mean that he is the god of knowledge, art, and music who aims to educate the Bengalis? Does he mean that he, too, is a product of literary hybridization and exists not despite but because of Punch?
Basantak is ostensibly not a mimic endeavor of Punch, although it initially claims that it is "created in the imitation of the English Punch" [End Page 12] (sahajē'i āmākē bilātē puñcēra anukaraṇa balā yāẏa)—a contradiction that becomes evident in the narrator's verbal ironies as the issues progress.42 Finding it difficult to break away from Mr. Punch's school of satire, he approaches his wife, Basantika (figure 6). Basantika acts as his advisor and occasionally counsels him on his social responsibilities. She tells him that Joseph Addison and Richard Steele found a way to express their views on the deplorable customs of England through satire—the spirit which, according to Basantika, Punch later adopts. She therefore instructs Basantak to follow Punch's mordant techniques dutifully.43 Rather than being facetious, Basantak should comment on the customs and laws of the land; he should not calumniously spread rumors about people's flaws or eavesdrop on private matters. He should primarily discuss the concerns of commoners, and if, within that discussion, someone specific needs to be criticized, then he should not abstain from it. Lastly, he must not slander important public figures. Finally, Basantika tells him that the appropriate use of satire is to expose folly. Basantak must ridicule unsavory issues through comic humor so that people may behold their flaws while they laugh at them.44 This detailed counsel of Basantika sets the objectives of the periodical for the following twenty-four issues.
Basantak is reluctant to behave like Mr. Punch, sartorially or ideologically, because he does not want to join the ranks of the babus—those imitative Bengalis whose tastes and education align them with the British.45 Basantak wonders if he could emulate an indigenous model to entertain Bengalis, which leads him to embrace the bidusak as a mouthpiece for his anti-imperial satire.46 Basantak's choice of this satirical model raises further questions regarding artistic imitation. For a magazine that solely functions on rhetorical devices like verbal irony, periphrasis, and paradox—Basantak means what he does not say and just the opposite of what he does say—it only seems obvious to ask: What is Basantak imitating even when it declares that it is created in the image of the English Punch?
Vernacular periodicals like Basantak evade, textually and visually, what Tanya Agathocleous calls "print mimicry" to critique the apparent militant masculinity of the British administrators.47 Although Basantak claims itself to be an imitation of Punch, the claim is insubstantial. The humor of the farces in Basantak is a product of a tripartite development of satire in Indian folk and oral traditions.48 These farces, like most farces written in the second half of the nineteenth century, borrowed characters, themes, settings, visual dramatization, and rhetorical structures from three sources. It borrowed slapstick humor from folk performances, dramatic qualities and rhetorical devices from Sanskrit plays, and the medium of illustrated journalism or satirical imagetexts from Sketches by Boz, written by Charles Dickens and illustrated by George Cruikshank.49 [End Page 13]
Basantak coaxes his wife, Basantika. Basantak 1, no. 10 (1874): 197.
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Emerging from the genealogical intersections of the bidusak, the kathak, and the English Mr. Punch, Basantak's anti-colonial satires display the thematic recurrence of the nineteenth-century social discourse of kaliyuga that captured the exaggerated vulnerabilities of the Hindu upper castes. Basantak complains, "Now is the time of kaliyuga" (ēkhana samaẏa halō ghōr kali).50 Sumit Sarkar writes that the second half of the nineteenth century was associated with the Hindu cosmological idea of the kaliyuga (the age of the demon Kali or the end of times), marked by discord, strife, and sin.51 The nineteenth-century kaliyuga also signified the shift in the existing social power dynamic that cut across class and caste, the mlēccha population (Muslims, Christians, and lower castes like Kristo Das Pal) usurping the rightful place of the Hindu Brahmins, and sexually liberated women wielding power over men due to their supposed emancipation through English education (like Basantak's wife, even though Basantak takes her advice). These three aspects of kaliyuga, resulting from British misrule and its cosmological and ontological violence against traditional conservatism and indigenous relationships, rendered Hindu men enervated and effete.52 The advent of kaliyuga also jeopardizes Basantak's purpose in society, as figures like Kristo Das Pal threaten his cushioned social and caste position. Kaliyuga, then, is a product of Brahminical discourse and a state of unending vulnerabilities for the Hindu upper castes. Basantak—a Brahminical product—deploys kaliyuga as a state of emergency to validate its protests against colonial rule insofar as colonialism ushered in this state.
The theme of kaliyuga was deployed in various colonial literature and genres, from farces to erotica, mysteries, history, and almanacs. These were printed on cheap, flimsy papers from woodcuts and sold at a low price to the middle-class literati.53 Named after the region in colonial Calcutta where they were printed and sold, these publications were called Battala literature. Jibananda Chattopadhyay argues that Basantak belongs to the tradition of nineteenth-century Battala printed books and, therefore, shares Battala literature's antagonistic standpoint against the New Woman, babus and their babudom, alcoholism, prostitution, apostasy, and the ever-conniving Brits.54 Chattopadhyay further notes that Prannath Dutta published Basantak at a time when the demand for farces surpassed plays. Basantak's satirical literature, accompanied by its lithographic illustrations inspired by Kalighat pats (scroll paintings or cloth paintings), was the Battala book trade's last gasp before it finally died out.55 Visually and textually, then, Basantak belongs to the literary traditions of urbane vernacular print, orature, and folk dramatic performances in colonial Bengal. Any trace of artistic imitation may be only half true, as Basantak's satire is far too esoteric and removed from the narrative structure of Punch. [End Page 15]
Objects of Satire: The Babu, the Baroda Crisis, and the Boar
Partha Mitter observes that Basantak's criticism of British administrators was closely tied to colonial misrule, class politics, the upwardly mobile English-educated babus, and the alliance between the government and wealthy landlords.56 But here, Mitter disregards an underlying yet ubiquitous discourse of Bengali effeminacy that had been pervasive since the end of the eighteenth century. British accusations of effeminacy and laziness directed at English-educated Bengali babus are well documented.57 Thus, the discourse of Bengali effeminacy vis-à-vis British militant masculinity is a crucial force behind Basantak's anti-colonial satire, for it shifts the derogatory insult of effeminacy onto British administrators to show the occasional fissures in their militant masculinity as well as the instability of masculine performances.
From the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial literati debated, resisted, and often internalized these derogatory slurs.58 The British militant imperial ideal created the so-called effeminate Bengali babu as its countertype. Imperial power discursively naturalized the effete countertype while at the same time justifying territorial expansion through military might as a manly enterprise.59 In the nineteenth century, Bengali farces espoused this ideology to ridicule Bengali babus (that is, themselves) for their lack of virility and bodily prowess, the constituent elements of masculinity and manliness.60 The babu finds himself entangled in the norms of this new European discourse of masculinity, which were set by the British and not Indians. Bengali effeminacy was thus a derivative discourse. Basantak understands this and dismisses the widespread propaganda that Bengali babus need physical prowess to compete with the British.61 Basantak refers to this anglicized babu as tender-bodied ("kōmala shoriri") but does not consider tenderness aberrant or unmanly.62 Although Basantak does not consider himself a babu, he protests the dehumanizing European discourse of colonial effeminacy. Narasingha Sil delineates that, historically, "babu" was an "endearing term used for individual males of distinction or those associated with the royalty."63 The word also had other connotations in the Bengali-speaking society. To a poor man, the term referred to a relatively wealthy man; to the British in Bengal, it was the native clerk who wrote in English; and to domestic servants, it identified their master. Babu is also defined as a fashionable person, a dandy, a poseur, an intellectual, a man of letters, and one who held a unique position or rank or had a special status.64 Basantak does not think of the tender-bodied babu as unmanly because the semasiological complexity of the concept of babu challenges the assumption of whether he was masculine or effete in his own right. Nevertheless, with his supposed lack of manliness and flawed rationality, [End Page 16] this babu became a stereotype in a perpetual crisis in the farcical episodes of Basantak.
Basantak's sympathy for the babu does not prevent him from lambasting the babu's state of docile servility and imitation. Sudipta Kaviraj writes that the babu in real life was "a rationalist out of opportunism"; he performed most of his traits, like adopting altruism, critiquing traditions, and embracing modernity, because the British saw them as commendable and not because they were the proper course of action.65 Basantak, therefore, writes that he has "never practically tried being a babu."66 Tanika Sarkar critiques the colonial babu's social ambitions. She notices an archival overflow in nineteenth-century Bengali literature that prioritized the babu while marginalizing women, children, and agricultural laborers, who suffered greatly in a time of perpetual fever, famines, and epidemics. This archival excess allowed the babu to replace other native bodies to become a momentous sign of the times.67 The babu—as the author of farces and a fictional protagonist—eventually became the subject and object of a literary canon that rendered him an immoral usurper, an insult magnet, a grotesque metonymy of liberal Bengalis, and a fecund object of Basantak's chiding commentaries.
Basantak's anti-colonial critique is also significant to the genealogy of Bengali visual culture. In the last decade, scholars of Bengali comics have sparked a renewed interest in Basantak. Bengali comics scholars and enthusiasts have unanimously located the first sequential narrative art that resembles twentieth-century comics in the last issue of Basantak. They argue that, among other Bengali satirical magazines and periodicals published in the second half of the nineteenth century, Basantak was the only magazine that printed a narrative cartoon (actually a protocomic strip) under the title "Kirkwood Bilas: Chitagong Plantain" (figures 7–9).68 This cartoon is a three-page, vertically organized, sequential pictorial narrative. Each page is divided into three equal panels accompanied by textual captions on the right or left side that describe the unfolding pictorial drama. The textual caption at the bottom of the panels was a common feature of comics-like Bengali imagetexts. Basantak contains the first paneled cartoon with speech bubbles in Bengali print culture, but it was not "Kirkwood Bilas: Chitagong Plantain"; instead, it was another sequential pictorial narrative on the Baroda Crisis called "Baradā kānḍa," which recounts rumors of the maharaja's conspiratorial plot to poison Sir Robert Phayre with arsenic (figures 10 and 11).69 Basantak tells the story of the Baroda Crisis as a pictorial narrative in volume 2, issue 3. This is one of the earliest comics-like sequential narratives we witness in Bengali print culture, and it depicts how rumors produced imperial vulnerabilities. [End Page 17]
"Kirkwood Bilas: Chitagong Plantain." Basantak 2, no. 12 (1876): 211.
[End Page 18]
"Kirkwood Bilas: Chitagong Plantain." Basantak 2, no. 12 (1876): 212.
[End Page 19]
"Kirkwood Bilas: Chitagong Plantain." Basantak 2, no. 12 (1876): 213.
[End Page 20]
Baroda Crisis or the "Baradā kānḍa." Basantak 2, no. 3 (1875): 42.
[End Page 21]
Baroda Crisis or the "Baradā kānḍa." Basantak 2, no. 3 (1875): 43.
[End Page 22]
When Col. Robert Phayre was stationed as the diplomatic Resident at Baroda in March 1873, Malhar Rao Gaikwar was the Maharaja of the Baroda State (1870–75). The pictorial story in Basantak is divided into five panels that trace the various emotional stages before and after the rumors of the poisoning. The transition from one panel to the next bridges the temporality between significant events. The first panel is labeled "Kērdāni" (bravery), which shows Phayre beating a drum to announce his arrival at Baroda, where he promises to offer sanctuary to those who would testify against the maharaja.70 The visual image of Phayre beating the drum plays on the caricaturesque expression of "beating one's drum" or boasting about oneself. Phayre boasts that no one has the audacity to oppose him, and for those who might try, let them behold the might of the bayonets guarding him.71 The image shows the utter bewilderment of the people of Baroda. Those squatting on the street wear puzzled facial expressions. A comic element seeps into the scene as Phayre exaggerates his militant abilities. Behind Phayre is his attendant from Poona (punākara), sporting his distinct handlebar mustache and turban. Behind the attendant, visible through a depth effect, is a row of soldiers brandishing their bayonets, amplifying Phayre's militancy.
In the second panel, titled "Rāg" (anger), the caption begins with the phrase "hariṣē biṣāda" (unpleasant tidings in a pleasant time).72 The attendant informs Phayre of the unsavory news that a "kharita" (written request or an official complaint) has been submitted against him to "lāṭ sāhēb," that is, Thomas Baring or Lord Northbrook, the Viceroy of India (1872–76).73 Phayre listens to the tidings with his hands on his waist as if preparing an assertive course of action.74 The wineglass on the dressing table next to him contains pomelo juice ("pēnēla śarabatēr gelās") and is a plot device that triggers future events from the third panel onwards.75 The caricature of the Baroda poisoning satirizes the rational military man, Phayre, for his irrational belief in rumors and paranoia about a poisoned glass of pomelo juice. The third panel recounts Phayre's ("Phēri sāhēb") daily routine: every morning, after enjoying the fresh air, Phayre enjoys a drink. In the panel, no sooner does Phayre touch the wineglass than his attendant whispers into his ear that the drink is poisoned. The attendant cannot confirm this but has heard from someone that it is poisoned with powdered diamond ("hirēra guṛā"), arsenic ("śekho"), and copper ("tābā" or tāmā). Upon being warned, Phayre looks perplexed. Perplexity leads to suspicion in the fourth panel. To overcome fear, Phayre sends for a doctor or chemical analyzer who comes to investigate the drink. Through his magnifying glass, the doctor notices an octahedral crystal ("akṭōhēndrāla krisṭāl").76 No longer doubting that the drink is poisoned, the doctor shows Phayre's belt ("kōmara bandha") and the glass to Lord Northbrook in the fifth [End Page 23] panel.77 Lord Northbrook is shocked to see the evidence and believes this was not a hoax. The last panel is therefore rightly titled "Jūjū"—imaginary or superstitious fear—as it addresses Northbrook's paranoia around this conspiracy. While the Baroda incident can be located within the broader anxieties of poisoning and adulteration that preoccupied the British in India, Basantak's caricature emphasizes the overt visual histrionics and childish gullibility of Phayre. Basantak portrays Phayre as a rational, militant government official who, after being outsmarted by an Indian rumormonger, abandoned his faculties, got the Viceroy involved, had a dynastic maharajah exiled, and left Baroda to be seized by the government.
Basantak and Punch show the differences in colonial Bengali-language and metropolitan English-language reportage. On April 10, 1875, Punch also published a not-so-sympathetic, facetious version of the affair titled "A Phayre Trial" (figure 12). Illustrated by Edward Linley Sambourne, this verse-cartoon in rhyming couplets reads:
Beware the GAIKWAR of BARODA,Lest some day in your brandy and soda,A dose he have mixedThat your flint will have fixed,Before you can spin on a pagoda.78
While Basantak's sequential illustrations detail the progression of events over time, Punch gives readers the gist of the events in a cartoon with the Gaikwar on the left, the toyish Phayre in the center, and the pensive Sgt. William Ballantine, who defended Gaikwar, on the right. The rhetoric of gender and race are merged in the speech bubble, where Punch subverts Sojourner's Truth's "Ain't I a Woman," widespread around 1863 during the American Civil War, or more likely Josiah Wedgwood's abolitionist slogan in 1786–77, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" to "Ain't I a Man and a Baroda."79 In contrast, Basantak reports the entire Baroda Crisis in a comic verse separate from the sequential cartoons analyzed in the preceding paragraphs. The comic verse exposes the hypocrisy in news reporting, divided opinions among witnesses on Phayre's poisoning, and those who profited from Malhar Rao's exile.80 Like a classical bidusak, Basantak shows his support for a king, albeit in satire.
Alongside the apparent silliness of administrators like Phayre, Basantak also satirizes administrative malfeasance and mismanagement. Sir Stuart Hogg was the Commissioner of Calcutta Police from 1866 to 1876. He founded the Detective Department of the Calcutta Police under the Circular Order No. 149 of 28 November 1868.81 During this time, he was also Chairman of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. In figure 13, "600,000 [End Page 24]
"A Phayre Trial." Punch, or The London Charivari, April 10, 1875, 153.
[End Page 25]
"600,000 Miunisipāla bhōjabāji." Basantak 1, no. 1 (1874): 19.
[End Page 26] Mi'unisipāla bhōjabāji" (Rs. 600,000 Municipal Prestidigitation), Stuart Hogg, dressed as a magician ("bājikara"), stands in the middle of the frame demonstrating a miniature model of the public market (Municipal Market or New Market) on the table.82 His stern expression, tightly pressed lips, and upright posture exude a sense of irritation, dignity, impatience, and urgency. Basantak parodies Hogg's stately attitude in the speech, "I want another 600,000 rupees."83 On the left are two figures: Mr. Baring, the bearded private investor (whom we encounter in another caricature), and the editor of the Calcutta-based newspaper the Englishman, sporting his fancy mustache, coat, and trousers. On the right is the prominent Babu Kristo Das Pal, identified by his turban, dark complexion, and two zigzagging threads on his body. This is the first caricature in Basantak where we encounter the graphic depiction of caste through the solid black color, as mentioned previously. The bearded Hogg displays the empty metallic safe in his right hand and says, "The money has vanished, but the market has appeared. As soon as I cover the market [with a cloth], you will also see it disappear."84 The people gathered around him ask, "Won't we get the money back?" to which Hogg replies, "Do you think it is a joke? Sure, the money will come. Give me 600,000 taka [rupees], and I will give you another market."85 Like a true magician, Hogg shows off his skills of robbing the locals and effectively extracting bribes, thereby influencing the course of events that will define the capital of the British Raj.
This caricature of Hogg refers to the passing of the Calcutta Markets Act (VIII) of 1871, which authorized the justices to raise a loan of 600,000 for the construction of the Municipal Market.86 The editorial note below the caricature states: "Hogg fundraised from wealthy landlords and other investors to establish Hogg Market. The money he raised the first time disappeared. Contemporaneous Bengali newspapers, like the Amrita Bazar Patrika, accused him of embezzlement. Stuart Hogg was then the Commissioner of Calcutta Police and the Chairman of Calcutta Municipality."87 For Harabōlā Bhār, Hogg's aspirations to climb the administrative ladder were no different from the educated Bengalis' desires to climb the social ladder (figure 14). Following the establishment of the New Market on January 1, 1874, Hogg's status as a swindler, double-dealer, and comic martinet became a permanent trope in Basantak.
Hogg's double-dealing is caricatured in another verse cartoon that deploys a mock-erotic style borrowed from medieval Vaishnava literature, which recounts the different phases of love between Lord Krishna and his consort, Radha (or Radhika). Hogg, dressed like the lovelorn Krishna with a peacock feather on his head, cajoles the huffed (abhimān) Babu Muty Lal Seal, dressed as Radha, to accept his contribution of Rs. 700,000 (figure 15).88 Kristo Das Pal stands between Hogg and Lal and is entirely [End Page 27]
Harabōlā Bhār 1 (1874).
black here too. Also, notice Pal's sartorial trend: the two pieces of cloth resembling an X around his body are also found in his other caricatures. This caricature builds upon Pal's original name before his conversion to Christianity and his professional relationship with Hogg in the Calcutta Municipality. Basantak puns on Pal's birth name, Krishna Das Pal, to make him appear as Krishna's dāsa, that is, the servant of Krishna (Hogg).
Hogg and Pal are surrounded by Hogg's compatriots, who are dressed like milkmaids (gopis) trying to persuade Pal. Babu Muty Lal Seal shies away from Hogg, refuses to show him his face, and inquires poetically, "The one who snatches butter and eats, refuses to offer donations, and goes around like a hooligan; why is he here?"89 The sentimental Hogg tries to propitiate Babu Muty Lal Seal on his knees. Since 1866, Hogg had been trying to establish the New Market exclusively for Europeans next to the Dhurumtola Market, but the project was occasionally abandoned due to a lack of funds. Whenever Hogg raised questions regarding the Municipal Market, Kristo Das Pal, Justice of the Peace and Municipal Commissioner of the Calcutta Municipality, used his oratorical skills to oppose it. Eventually, it was only with Pal's significant influence that an "amicable settlement" was reached between Babu Muty Lal Seal, the proprietor of the Dhurumtola Market, and Stuart Hogg: the municipality bought the Dhurumtola Market from Seal for Rs. 700,000.90 In this caricature, Basantak [End Page 28]
The love story between Hogg, Kristo Das, and Muty Lal. Basantak 1, no. 2 (1874): 32.
[End Page 29] lampoons the corrupt liaisons between Hogg and Pal and the coercion of Muty Lal Seal, while it simultaneously exposes Pal's hypocrisy beneath the veneer of his critical columns in the Hindoo Patriot.
Moreover, in framing Hogg and Pal's professional relationship within the tradition of Indian erotics—that is, the sexual love between Radha and Krishna—Basantak teases out the latent homoeroticism at work in the male-dominated space of colonial administration. This caricature recognizes what Sara Suleri, in a different context, deftly sums up as "how much the colonial encounter depends upon the disembodied homoeroticism rather than on the traditional metaphor of ravishment and possession."91 By distorting the scenic verisimilitude of devotional figures in the caricature, Basantak changes the pictorial drama from cosmic to colonial, romantic to hypocritical.
The caricatures of Phayre and Hogg, though different in their satires of colonial paranoia and corruption, nonetheless also bear similarities. The success of Hogg's "amicable settlement" is also satirized in another caricature where Hogg beats the festive ḍhāk (on which is written "NEW MARKET ACT") and dances to this tune: "Seven lakhs, seven lakhs, I will take the market, I will do business, everyone will be trounced, long live our Baring" (figure 16).92 The editor of the Englishman also joins him in the celebration by clanging a brass gong. The person on the left who whispers "keep it low" into Hogg's ears is Mr. Baring, a private entrepreneur who was involved in buying the Dhurumtola market. On the right, at the back, is Kristo Das Pal; frazzled by the uproarious drumbeats, he plugs his fingers into his ears and exclaims in a speech bubble, "Stop it! This is getting deafening." This is more of a festive commotion than a festive celebration as Hogg is beating his own drum like Phayre. Such self-centered celebratory profusion, for Basantak, reeks of corruption, complicity, and venality.
Basantak further attacks Hogg's competence as an administrator in the cartoon "Kalikatar Varaha Avatar" (The Boar Avatar of Calcutta) (figure 17). Punning on the homonymic proximity between Hogg and hog (or boar), Basantak caricatures him as the colossal lord Varaha, who is half-man, half-boar.93 This critique is deployed in a mock-heroic style as Basantak uses the Varaha myth to satirize Hogg's unscrupulous commercial ventures as Chairman of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. Hogg's comparison to Varaha does not apotheosize but rather theriomorphizes him; he has been transformed into a grotesque chimera, a literal catastrophic boar (pralaẏa varāha). Hogg's power of jurisdiction gives way to the power of destruction. In the caricature, Stuart Hogg as Varaha lifts the city of Calcutta on his tusk. He holds a mace, a lotus, a conch, and a discus in his four hands as he crushes the demon underneath him. The supplicating zamindar on the left and the British official on the right pray to [End Page 30]
Hogg plays the ḍhāk. Basantak 2, no. 3 (1875): 57.
[End Page 31]
Stuart Hogg as Varaha (the Boar Avatar). Basantak 1, no. 1 (1874): 6.
[End Page 32] the mighty Hogg (hog) not to destroy the city. Through bathos, the cosmic becomes comic.
Hogg is reduced from a punishing god to a punished child in the cartoon "Śrīmati kālikābatī ō tāhāra ābdārēra chēlē" (Mrs. Kalikabati and Her Spoilt Brat). Here, Hogg is portrayed as a spoilt child who plays truant and needs schooling from his mother (figure 18). Kālikābatī, or the personified mother Kalikata (Calcutta), storms out of the house to scold her child, who plays with broken toys that resemble horse-drawn trams. Kālikābatī's angry speech provides evidence of this child's identity, as she yells at her son, "You piggish boy, you made us buy those vehicles for 50,000 taka, and then you destroyed them immediately; couldn't you wait a bit longer?" Frightened by his mother's intimidation, the boy bites down on his right fist. The frown on his forehead and crooked eyebrows suggest that his mother has caught him red-handed. He tries to argue his way out while holding the broken toys: "Who told you I broke them? They broke on their own. Why did you startle me like that? I will complain to father." Kālikābatī's reference to her son as "piggish" (from pig or suẏār in Bengali) makes it clear that the child is Stuart Hogg. The child's father is Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal from 1871 to 1874. This incident relates to the discontinuation of the first horse-drawn trams in Calcutta, which were in operation for less than a year between February 24 and November 20, 1873.94 Kālikābatī scolds Hogg, the Chairman of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, for sabotaging public transport. In Basantak's caricatures, Hogg devolves first into a boar and then into a pig; in the shape of the gigantic god Varaha, Hogg is reduced to a theriomorphic chimera, and then as a piggish boy, he is further reduced to an inconsiderate child in need of his mother's admonition.95
Conclusion
Basantak's satires of the period of kaliyuga, or the second half of the nineteenth century, are esoteric, eclectic, and polyglottal as they draw on Indian literary and aesthetic traditions based on orature, écriture, and folk performances. In the farces, Basantak shows British officials displaying similar attitudes, temperaments, and behaviors for which they accused Bengalis of being effete and hybrid ("dōẏāśalā").96 By highlighting Phayre's irrational fear and Hogg's perfidy, Basantak ridicules the militant masculinity, corruption, incompetence, venality, and imperiousness that lie at the core of British rule in India. Although the magazine simultaneously exposes its own caste and gender prejudices, Basantak's anti-colonial cartoons and caricatures undermine the ethos of British militancy by foregrounding the nature of homosocial complicities in spaces of power and the binary [End Page 33]
"Śrīmati kālikābatī ō tāhāra ābdārēra chēlē" (Mrs. Kalikabati and her spoilt brat). Basantak 1, no. 2 (1874): 40.
[End Page 34] of masculinity/effeminacy that justifies racial and gender discrimination. Ultimately, the short-lived Basantak reveals a complex understanding of nineteenth-century imagetextuality and an anti-colonial critique beset with its own problems of gender, caste, and the politics of imitation.
Sourav Chatterjee is a PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. His research interests are South Asian visual culture, literary and cultural criticism, printed imagetext, and decolonial gender epistemologies. His dissertation traces printed imagetexts and the politics of gender representation in colonial Bengal. He has published in the International Journal of Comic Art, ImageText, and South Asian Review.
NOTES
1. Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 140. The other Punch-like magazines published in India between 1850 to 1910 were the Oudh Punch, the Delhi Punch, Momus, the Punjab Punch, the Indian Punch, Gujrati Punch, and Parsi Punch.
3. Mitter blames the ethos of Victorian evangelism for the founding of the society (Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 132).
5. Anon., "Hindoo 'Civilians' and their Value," Spectator, May 9, 1868, quoted in Rosselli, "Self-Image of Effeteness," 122.
6. J. Chattopadhyay, "Battalar Basantak"; Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India and "Punch and Indian Cartoons"; and Basu, "Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal."
7. For recent works on nineteenth-century English-language periodicals in India, see Agathocleous, Disaffected; Joshi, Empire News; Kaul, Reporting the Raj; Paul, "Hindoo Patriot and Hurish Chandra Mookherjea." There is also a substantial body of scholarship on nineteenth-century Indianlanguage periodicals, most pertinently for this essay, on Bengali-language periodicals. See A. Gupta, Spread of Print in Colonial India into the Hinterland; Bose, Health and Society in Bengal; Mitra, Periodicals, Readers and the Making of a Modern Literary Culture; Mitter, "Punch and Indian Cartoons"; and Basu, "Punch tradition in late nineteenth century Bengal."
8. The publication history of Basantak has never been determined. None of the twenty-four issues of Basantak carries its month or year of publication. Most Bengali magazines of the nineteenth century carried a publication date that either followed the Bengali or the English calendar, but for Basantak, we have none, which has spawned citational inconsistencies in scholarship that refers to the periodical.
9. Italicized Basantak refers to the periodical, while the unitalicized term refers to the narrator of the periodical.
10. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 Poush 1280/January 9, 1874, 383. All Bengali translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
11. Émile Grillot de Givry draws an interesting parallel between the visual representation of old witches with long aquiline noses and the "face of Punch" (Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy, 66–67).
13. Ibid. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
14. Only a handful of pages are digitized and available through the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) collection "Periodicals and Newspapers from Bengal," https://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/fachinfo/suedasien/zeitschriften/bengali/overview.html.
17. For more on the image-textual relationship in periodicals, see Mainardi, Another World, 119–57; Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 30–50; Leary, Punch Brotherhood, 35–56; Bindman, "Text as Design in Gillray's Caricatures," 309–23; and Goldman, Reading Victorian Illustration, 13–32.
18. Punch has numerous homonymic references in the Indian context, some of them being pañc (five), punch (flavored cocktail), sarpanch (judiciary head of the village), and śrīpañcamī (Saraswati puja of the spring festival). See Paranjape, "Crossing Boundaries," 153.
19. On this Varaha myth, see Dalal, Hinduism, 2317–21. There is a fascinating astronomical interpretation of the Varaha myth, which states that in the autumnal equinox, Lord Vishnu assumes the shape of the sun and crosses the celestial equator to move to the south, while during the spring equinox, he (sun) travels north in the form of the constellation Orion, or the sacrificial boar (Yājñavarāha). Therefore, Varaha rescuing the earth from the netherworld (rasātala) or the southern hemisphere is allegorical of this annual spring equinox. See Roy, Theory of Avatāra and Divinity of Chaitanya Krishna, 97. Krishna is one of Vishnu's avatars. Madhav is one of Krishna's names, which also means "springtime." The word Madhav is also derived from madhu, which means "honey" in Sanskrit and Bengali; therefore, the month of Chaitra in Bengali is also known as madhumash, the month of honey. On the etymology of Madhava, see Miller, introduction to Gītagovinda of Jayadeva, 19.
20. See Arnold, "Smallpox and Colonial Medicine in Nineteenth-Century India," 46, and Nicholas, "Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal," 25–27, 39.
22. On reproductive politics in the backdrop of famines in the 1870s, see Srinivas, Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, 29–61.
25. Arnold writes that physical degeneracy was inversely equivalent to class hierarchy in Bengali society, and this allegation was true for the Englisheducated, dissipated babus in Calcutta but not for the men of the lower classes who were employed by the landowners as lathiyals (stave-wielders) to protect their land and terrorize dacoits; see Colonizing the Body, 240–89.
26. Basu mentions only the first three rhetorical devices in Basantak ("Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal," 126).
27. Khanduri also notices the bidusak (vidusaka) traditions of the Sanskrit drama in other Indian Punches ("Vernacular Punches," 470). The well-known treatment of the figure of the jester bidusak appears in Kalidasa's play Abhijnanashakuntalam, where he is the king's companion and confidant.
30. See "Kāsārīder sawng," Basantak 2, no. 10, 167–71, and "Kāsārīder sawnger geet," Basantak 2, no. 10, 171–73. For more on sawngs, see Sur, Sekaler Bangalir Saatkahon, 115–17; Banerjee, Unis Sataker Kolkata O Saraswatir Itar Santan, 150–51, 264–65, and Parlour and the Streets, 123–28.
35. Ibid.
36. In 1863, Pal was appointed as a Justice of the Peace and Municipal Commissioner of the Calcutta Municipality (Sanyal, Life of the Hon'ble Rai Kristo Das Pal Bahadur, 120).
39. Ibid.
42. "Basantak-Basantika Rahasya," Basantak 1, no. 1, 15.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 15–16.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Agathocleous discusses print mimicry in the context of English-language print culture and not vernacular print culture; see Disaffected, 27–32.
49. Singha, Sateek Hutom Pyachar Naksha, 10. In Basantak, there are numerous references to Kaliprasanna Singha's Hutom Pyachar Naksha (The Barn Owl's Observations, 1861), which contains brilliant satirical sketches on various aspects of nineteenth-century Bengali society in colloquial Bengali; see "Purbabangla" ("East Bengal"), Basantak 1, no. 8, 151.
52. Ibid., 186–215, 282–357.
54. The New Woman was a nationalist construction who was granted some freedom of education from older patriarchal tradition. This nationalist project rendered the New Women different from men in society and Western women. The New Woman was defined by the new patriarchy, which sought to reform women insofar as they maintained the differences between sex roles and did not sabotage their femininity and status within the household by becoming memsahibs. See Chatterjee, "Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question," 129–30.
57. On British militancy and how it inflected colonial masculinities, see Rosselli, "Self-Image of Effeteness"; Nandy, Intimate Enemy; Sinha, "Manly Englishman" and the "Effeminate Bengali"; Chowdhury, Frail Hero and the Virile History; Streets, Martial Races.
58. Rosselli, "Self-Image of Effeteness," 127. Here, class is not referred to in a Marxist sense of class antagonism or economic stratification. In the context of Bengal, it refers to status or rank in the society determined by access to Western education as well as a thorough inculcation into traditional knowledge systems, acquisition of capital, and professional employment under the Raj; see S. Gupta, Notions of Nationhood in Bengal, 163.
60. The people who wrote these farces (i.e., English-educated Bengalis) were also babus. Kaviraj has called this a self-ironical tradition ("Laughter and Subjectivity," 386–90).
61. Basantak 1, no. 7, 129. Basantak's raillery is directed at Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's essay "Bangalir Bahubol" ("The Physical Prowess of Bengalis"), published in volume 3 of the literary magazine Bangadarshan (Srabon 1281/July–August 1874, 145–154). Chattopadhyay was the author of the first Indian-English novel, Rajmohan's Wife (1864).
64. Ibid.
67. T. Sarkar, "Hindu Wife and the Hindu Nation," 220. Bankim also castigates the middle-class Bengali Hindu babu group but nevertheless refuses to accept his affiliation to the group. See Kaviraj, "Laughter and Subjectivity," 222, and P. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 35.
69. Court proceedings of the Baroda Case are published in The Great Baroda Case, Being a Full Report of the Proceedings of the Trial and Deposition of His Highness Mulhar Rao Gaekwar of Baroda for Instigating an Attempt to Poison the British Resident at his Court (Calcutta: R. Cambray, 1905).
71. Ibid.
72. The square and rectangular panel outlines are not present in the original illustrations digitized by the CSSSC, https://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/fachinfo/suedasien/zeitschriften/bengali/basantaka.html.
73. Rao's kharita was issued in Phayre's name on October 20, 1874, and was addressed to Lord Northbrook. Rao mentions that Phayre has shown more opposition than support since he first assumed his station in Baroda. Rather than settling the grievances of the deprived, he encouraged others to complain against the state. See Moulton, "British India and the Baroda Crisis," 75n22.
74. Copland describes Phayre as "a typical product of the Indian Army: honest, average, intelligent, zealous in the execution of his duties, and somewhat tactless when dealing with 'inferiors.' At the same time he possessed qualities of drive, audacity and initiative which set him apart from the mass of his professional colleagues" ("Baroda Crisis of 1873–77," 102).
77. Phayre's telegram to the Secretary of the Bombay Police Department addressed on November 9, 1874, read: "Bold attempt to poison me this day has been providentially frustrated" (quoted in Copland, "Baroda Crisis of 1873–77," 109).
78. "Phayre Trial," 153. Sambourne succeeded Tenniel as the chief cartoonist of Punch. Roe praises Sambourne as someone who would "caricature a great man with the fittest of comical attributes; he would portray a gleaminglimbed nymph and surround her with creeping grotesques. Whether detailed or simple, his work—one looks back to his heyday—is masterly" (Victorian Corners, 70).
79. "Baroda" would sound similar to the last word of Wedgwood's slogan, "brother," when pronounced like "Broda." I thank Professor Parama Roy for this reference.
80. "Daśakatāra pāca katha" ("Five Words Out of Ten"), Basantak 2, no. 2, 30–33; "Barodakanda" ("Baroda Crisis"), Basantak 2, no. 3, 37–46.
82. Basantak 1, no. 1, 19. Bhōjabāji can also be translated as magic, sleight of hand, prestidigitation, or skillful deception. The New Market was designed by Richard Roskell Bayne. It was renamed Hogg Market in 1903.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
88. Basantak 1, no. 2, 32. It is a difficult caricature to interpret since one cannot be sure whether Hogg is offering or asking for Rs. 700,000 (7 lakhs) until we encounter the word laha, which means "accept" (as in, you accept) in the utterance "sāta lakṣa dāna laha" ("accept my donation of seven lakhs").
89. Ibid.
93. Mitter has also pointed out this wordplay in Art and Nationalism, 163.
94. For the causes of the failure of the horse-drawn trams, see Goode, Municipal Calcutta, 324–25.
95. Basantak 1, no. 9, 165. Basantak ultimately suggests that the municipality resembles a colonial bestiary, which includes animals like "Hog" and a plethora of other caricatures: "Lamb" is R. Lamb, 1st Grade Inspector and assistant to A. Younan, who was the first superintendent of the Detective Department of the Calcutta Police; "Bull" might be referring to William Bull, the English botanist and nurseryman who assisted with orchids and plants during the expansion of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Calcutta in 1874; "Wolf" might be the German artist Joseph Wolf, who famously drew the Rhinoceros unicornis (Indian one-horned rhino) in 1872; and "Fox" might be Mr. Neil Fox, who obtained the privilege to manufacture sugarcane mills under a patent dated February 10, 1874.
