Hindu Nationalism, Sanskrit the National Language and Bengali Writers' Visions
Hindu Nationalism, Sanskrit the National Language and Hindu Bengali Writers' Visions Rammohun Roy, Bankimchandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore (re-)construct a glorious past of the Hindu nation on the basis of Sanskrit literature (van Bijlert present volume). What were the reasons and motivations for the Bengali Hindu intellectuals to use Sanskrit texts as an ideological basis for nation building? In what follows we will take up for examination writings by Rammohun Roy, Bankimchandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore, three famous and influential Bengali authors whose writing career spans almost a century. They all wrote on Hindu religion and the Indian nation. As to Indian culture and the nation, the following motivations and assumptions can be extracted from many Bengali and English texts of that period: (a) gaining respect and self-respect, (b) the antiquity of Sanskrit, (c) the classical character of Sanskrit literature, (d) apparent universal extension of Sanskrit ove