Rajmohan's Wife by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

Originally serialized in an obscure journal called Indian Field in 1864, Rajmohan’s Wife was Bankimchandra’s only novel in English. Only two years later, in 1866, he wrote his first Bangla novel Durgeshnandini which became such a massive success that it completely eclipsed anything he had written before. He went on to write fourteen novels and much else, all of it in Bangla. Rajmohan’s Wife is neither well known nor considered among Bankim's best works. It is a forgotten piece of work in a language that the author seems to have tried on for size and swiftly turned away from, and it has remained in its odd and exiled state ever since.

Except for this edition that we now have from Penguin Classics that is based on the 1935 edition of the novel, brought out by Brajendranath Banerji. The story behind this is fascinating. Issues of Indian Field were nearly impossible to come by in 1935, and Banerji managed, by a stroke of luck and a binder’s error, to lay his hands on the issues that contained all but the first three chapters of the novel. Bankim himself had worked in later years on a Bangla version of the novel, but he could only complete seven chapters, his nephew finishing it for him using his own imagination, without any idea that this was a translation, he believed it to be an original work. Brajendranath Banerji used the first three chapters from Bankim's Bangla version and translated this back into English for the complete work to be reissued. 

I found the writing in Rajmohan’s Wife to be patchy, but the story was engaging. Matangini, the female protagonist, is trapped in a marriage with a brutish husband Rajmohan. Her sister Hemangini is married to an educated and rich young man called Madhav. Matangini is in love with Madhav. Social mores of the time render anything in this realm impossible and Matangini’s feelings for Madhav and vice versa are blanketed in guilt. In the meantime, we have intrigue, a plot to rob Madhav not just of his valuables but of his inheritance, Matangini’s intervention to save him, and her own husband’s involvement in these nefarious acts. One gets the feeling from the early chapters that the author may have originally intended for this to be a longer novel, and I wouldn’t have minded reading a longer version. But it all ends rather abruptly, the last few chapters feel quite rushed. Meenakshi Mukherji in the Afterword indicates the possibility of the writer losing interest in his characters and contriving a quick end, so he could move on. 

Termed by many as a “false start” to Bankimchandra’s literary journey and accomplishments, Rajmohan’s Wife may be a forgotten novel and not representative of what the writer went on to produce. But it is fascinating to understand the connection between language and cultural context and why in 19th century India, and Bengal, the Victorian narrative convention failed to find any resonance. Despite all this, I was happy to have read the very first Indian novel in English.