Bankim Chandra Chatterjee Quotes

Bengali writer, poet and journalist (1838-1894)

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Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (also Chattopadhayay) (27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894) was an Indian novelist, poet and journalist. He was the author of the 1882 Bengali language novel Anandamath, which is one of the landmarks of modern Bengali and Indian literaure. He was the composer of Vande Mataram, originally in Sanskrit, personifying India as a mother goddess and inspiring activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhayay wrote fourteen novels and many serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treatises in Bengali. He is known as Sahitya Samrat (Emperor of Literature) in Bengali.

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Native Name: বঙ্কিমচন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়

Alternative Names: Baṅkimacandra Caṭṭopādhyāẏa • Bankim Chandra Chatterji • Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay • Babu Bankim Chandra Chatterjee • Bankim chandra chatterjee • Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay(originally Bengali) • Bankimchandra Chatarjee • Bankim Chandra Chatarjee

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Do not lose your reverence for the past; it is on the past that you must plant your foot firmly, if you wish to mount high in the future. You are not a race of savages who have no past to remember. You cannot dissever yourselves in a day from the associations and influences of a past which extends over at least five hundred centuries. You cannot annihilate in a day a past national existence which has survived the annihilation of hundreds of empires, of hundred systems of religion, and which has surveyed unconcerned the downfall and ruin of many kindred civilizations. I have to make my warning so emphatic because the general tendency of European scholars, who have so great an influence over you, is to decry your past history, to call for its virtual erasure from your memory, and to lead you in the opposite direction.

Prose must be written in language that is well understood by its readers. The world would hardly miss those literary works that are mastered by only half-a-dozen pundits.

Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is light, man is shadow.

When a man is in doubt what to do, he goes wherever he happens to be first called.

...this novel was written not to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims...In statesmanship Muslims undoubtedly were better than contemporary Hindus...one who possesses, among other virtues, dharma, no matter if he be a Hindu or a Muslim, is the best.

[N]o study is likely to be fruitful of results if carried on without a system. The majority of those who pursue knowledge for its own sake pursue it after an aimless and desultory fashion.

[In the original edition of the novel Sitaram, the Fakir says:]
Son, I hear that you have come to found a Hindu dominion; but if you be a slave to popular prejudices you will fail to achieve your aim. If you don't consider Hindus and Muslims as equals, then in this land inhabited by both Hindus and Muslims you will fail to keep your kingdom intact. Your projected Dharmarajya will degenerate into a realm of sin.