Manilal Dwivedi

Manilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi (pronounced [mɘnilal nəbʰubʰai dwivedɪ] (listen); 26 September 1858 – 1 October 1898) was a Gujarati-language writer, poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, editor and social reformer. Commonly referred to as Manilal in literary circles, he influenced 19th-century Gujarati literature and was the first graduate of Bombay University to be recognised in the field. He was one of several Gujarati writers and educators, among them Narmad, Dalpatram, Karsandas Mulji, Govardhanram Tripathi, Mansukhram Tripathi and Navalram Pandya, who set about to press for reforms and awareness of the problems their community was facing.

Manilal Dwivedi
Manilal Dwivedi
BornManilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi
(1858-09-26)26 September 1858
Nadiad, Bombay presidency, British India
Died1 October 1898(1898-10-01) (aged 40)
Nadiad, Bombay presidency, British India
Occupationwriter, poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, editor and social reformer
LanguageGujarati
NationalityIndian
EducationBA
Alma materElphinstone College (1877–1880; BA)
PeriodPandit Yuga
Notable works
Years active1876–1898

Manilal belongs to the Pandit Yuga, an era of Gujarati literature during which scholarly writing evolved. His main works include Atmanimajjan, a collection of poems on the theme of love in the context of advaita (non-duality) philosophy; Kanta, a play combining Sanskrit and English dramatic techniques; Nrusinhavatar, a play based on Sanskrit dramatic traditions; Pranavinimaya, a study of yoga and mysticism; and Siddhantasara, a historical critique of the world's religious philosophies. His faith in Shankara's advaita philosophy was the fundamental underpinning of his philosophical thoughts. As he held Eastern civilisation in high esteem, he resisted the influence of Western civilisation and social reform.

Manilal appeared to be contradictory in his professions and performance. In his private life, he indulged in unrestrained eroticism and promiscuous relationships. He married at the age of thirteen and had two children. Due to his visits to brothel, he contracted syphilis and, after suffering from serious bouts of illness throughout his life, died on 1 October 1898 at the age of 40. Narmad, the founder of modern Gujarati literature, considered Manilal his intellectual heir. Manilal elaborated upon Narmad's line of thinking through his writings in the monthlies Priyamvada and Sudarshan, which he edited from 1885 until his death.

Early life

Manilal was born on 26 September 1858 at Nadiad, Gujarat, to a Sathodara Nagar family. His father, Nabhubhai, was a moneylender and temple priest. The day after Manilal's birth, a local astrologer declared that he would have a brilliant career.[1]

Manilal obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Elphinstone College in 1880.
Shamaldas College, Bhavnagar

Manilal completed his primary and secondary education in Nadiad. At the age of four, he began attending primary school; his dislike of arithmetic led him to be absent from that subject. He showed good progress at secondary school; he was ranked first in the annual examination of the second standard and won a prize. His teacher granted him promotion to the fourth standard as a special case, but Manilal was not happy with this favour and requested a demotion to the third standard. He was not proficient in Sanskrit and geometry, and failed Sanskrit in his matriculation examination in 1875. However, he was ranked second in examinations at Bombay University the following year, winning the James Tylor prize.[2]

He joined the Elphinstone College in 1877 and completed a Bachelor of Arts in history and politics in 1880. Under pressure from his father to earn a wage, he left his studies but completed his Master of Arts studies as an autodidact. He returned to Nadiad and in July 1880, became an assistant teacher at the government high school. In 1881, he was transferred to Bombay as a deputy education inspector of girls' schools. He joined Shamaldas College in Bhavnagar in 1885 but retired in 1889 due to health problems.[3][4]

Dhirubhai Thaker, a biographer of Manilal, noted that Manilal had an impressive personality and was tall and handsome in appearance. He habitually wore a long coat, a brahmin-style dhoti, a red turban and a long loose scarf hanging over his shoulders.[5]

Works

Manilal's writings belong to the Pandit Yuga (the age of scholars), an era of Gujarati literature during which scholarly writing evolved.[6] His writing career began in 1876 with the poem Shiksha Shatak and continued until his death.[7] He contributed to almost all popular forms and published poems, plays, essays, an adaptation of an English novel, book reviews, literary criticism, research, edited works, translations, compilations, and an autobiography in manuscript form. He also wrote articles on philosophical and literary subjects, which have been collected in Sudarshan Gadyawali (1909). He was an exponent of advaita philosophy; throughout his life, he interpreted all aspects of human life and civilisation in the context of Advaita Vedanta (monism),[3] writing several articles and books on the topic.[8]

Literary works

Manilal's first literary attempt was the play Kanta (1882).[3] A fusion of Sanskrit drama and Shakespearean tragedy, the play had the first tragic hero in Gujarati drama.[9] Manilal wrote another play, Nrusinhavatar (1896), at the request of the Mumbai Gujarati Natak Company. It was based on Hindu mythological episodes, and was staged in 1899 after his death.[8]

Amar Asha, a ghazal by Manilal Dwivedi, in his handwriting

Manilal based his poetry collection Atmanimajjan (1895) on his own circumstances, with the theme of love.[10] It largely consisted of ghazals in the style of Persian Sufis. Despite flaws of language, such as the misuse of Persian words, they were held to capture the spirit of ghazal. Through them, Manilal illustrated the concepts of the Advaita Vedanta, and his disappointments and cravings for love were expressed. His ghazal "Amar Asha" is popular in Gujarati.[8]

He adapted Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni into Gujarati as Gulabsinh (1897).[11] Writer Dhirubhai Thaker noted that "Gulabsinh occupies an important place in Gujarati literature as a unique adaptation of an English novel, and as a novel of occult interest and a rare love-story of a human and a superhuman character."[12] It was later adapted into the Gujarati plays Prataplakshmi (1914) by Mulshankar Mulani and Siddha Satyendra (1917) by Chhotalal Rukhdev Sharma.[13]

His autobiography Atmavrittanta was published posthumously in 1979, eighty years after his death. It created a stir due to its outspoken nature and its unreserved accounts of his moral lapses.[3]

Religious and philosophical writings

Manilal wrote two books in Gujarati. By design, the first made practical expressions of spiritualism according to Hindu philosophy and is titled Pranavinimaya. It was written from 2 August to 9 September 1888 and published in December. It addressed the science of mesmerism and presents a study of yoga and mysticism; it attempts to establish a similarity between mesmerism and yoga, and to establish the superiority of spiritualism over materialism.[8][14]

The second, Siddhantasara, was a discourse on the theoretical aspect of Advaita philosophy in the context of other world religions. Manilal began writing it shortly after Pranavinimaya, though his work was delayed by illness. It was completed in March 1889 and published in June 1889.[14] It outlines the development of Indian philosophy and makes a case for the superiority of Advaita philosophy over all other religious philosophies. It created prolonged controversy; many were particularly critical of the logical lapses and inconsistencies in Manilal's arguments.[15]

Manilal wrote several books in English which were well received in India, Europe and America, including Monism or Advaitism? (1889) and Advaita Philosophy.[8]

He compiled a book on Rāja yoga and published papers on Advaita, Hindu and Jain philosophies at the Oriental Congress. He spent nine months at Patan, Gujarat, preparing a catalogue of more than two thousand manuscripts from Jain libraries. This resulted in the establishment of the Baroda State Archeology Department, which he headed from 1893 to 1895.[3][16] He was invited to present a paper at the first Parliament of World Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, which he could not attend due to financial constraints, but his paper on Hinduism was read by Virchand Gandhi there.[17][18]

Social reform and educational writings

Manilal was one of several Gujarati writers and educators, among them Narmad, Dalpatram Dahyabhai Travadi, Karsandas Mulji, Govardhanram Tripathi, Mansukhram Tripathi and Navalram Pandya, who set about to press for reforms and awareness of the problems their community was facing.[19]

During his school years, Manilal was a member of an association known as Swa-Sudharak (self-reformist). At the age of 15, he, along with his friends, started a Prarthana Samaj movement in Nadiad. However, its activities did not extend beyond a small group. In Bombay, he was associated with the Gujarat Social Union, an association of Gujarati graduates. He took a keen interest in mesmerism and occultism. He came into contact with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, the first President of the Theosophical Society, and became a member in 1882, writing a series of articles on theosophy.[20]

Around 1882, Mansukhram Suryaram Tripathi encouraged Manilal to revive the Buddhi Vardhak Sabha social and literary group. Thereafter, Manilal acted as its secretary and discussion on various topics took place under its auspices. Here, he came in contact with Narmad, who was much impressed by Manilal's scholarship and his writings on Indian cultural tradition. Later, Narmad, on his death-bed, expressed the hope that Manilal would carry forward the reform activities he had expounded.[21] Manilal elaborated upon Narmad's line of thinking through his writings in the monthlies Priyamvada and Sudarshan, which he edited from 1885 until his death in 1898.[22]

Bal Vilas (1897) is a collection of Manilal's essays on religion and morality, which were specially written for schoolgirls. Sudarshan Gadyawali (1909) is a collection of his articles published in Priyamvada (1885–1890) and Sudarshan (1890–1898). These articles cover many subjects, such as religion, education, sociology, economics, politics, literature and music. As Mansukhlal Jhaveri noted in History of Gujarati Literature, through his writing in Priyamvada and Sudarshan, Manilal emerged as the acknowledged master of Gujarati prose.[8]

Translation

Manilal translated the Sanskrit plays Malati Madhava and Uttararamacarita by Bhavabhuti into Gujarati. Of these, Uttararamacarita was considered an excellent translation by the critic Mansukhlal Jhaveri. He also translated Samuel Smiles's Character into Gujarati as Charitrya,[8] and the Bhagavad Gita with commentary.[14]

Controversies

Manilal's tirades against modern reformers and his message of "no surrender to the West" created a stir in Gujarati society. He criticised reformers who advocated modernity at the cost of Indian tradition. As a result, reformers such as Ramanbhai Neelkanth, who was also a writer and intellectual, spoke out against Manilal's conservatism.[23] Manilal criticised the Prarthana Samaj for importing the concept of God as a transcendental creator from Christianity, which, according to him, was "the fifth edition of Aryadharma (Indian religion)". On behalf of the Prarthana Samaj, Ramanbhai Neelkanth entered into a seven-year dispute with Manilal on numerous topics related to religion, philosophy, social reform, education and literature. Their public debates are considered unparalleled in Gujarat's history of reflective literature.[5]

In 1884, Manilal published Nari Pratishtha in eight instalments in weekly periodical Gujarati. In this essay, he opposed widow-marriage and argued that if a woman was correctly and morally educated, she would cultivate the temperament of not wishing to remarry should she become a widow. It was republished, with additions, in book form in 1885.[24] He entered into a public disagreement with Behramji Malabari on the issue of widow-remarriage, which continued for six months in the pages of Advocate of India and The Indian Spectator. Malabari was attempting to move the Government to legislate in favour of widow-remarriage, and tried to persuade Manilal to give up his opposition to this; Manilal refused.[25]

Personal life

At the age of 13, Manilal married Mahalaxmi, with whom he had an unhappy marriage. She gave birth to two sons, one in 1882 and the other in 1887, and separated from Manilal in 1890. Manilal had an obsession for love and formed close relationships with several women. As Dhirubhai Thaker noted in his biography of Manilal, not all of these relationships were platonic: in several cases, Manilal tried to satisfy his sexual desires under the pretext of being in love. While he was in Bombay, he fell in love with the wife of an acquaintance, and composed poems addressed to her in a variety of moods. Another affair was with Diwalibai, a teacher in a Bombay girls' school, Manilal initially rejected her but she persisted, sending him a series of love letters, and he agreed to respond to her love, though refraining from a sexual relationship.[26] Diwali's letters were first published by Ambalal Purani in the November 1936 issue of Kaumudi, a Gujarati monthly. They were reproduced in the Atmavrittanta as an appendix.[27]

From 1891, Manilal began an affair with Ramlakshmi, the wife of his pupil Chhotu, which lasted two-and-a-half years. He also had a brief affair with Chhotu's mistress, Ladi.[28] In his autobiography, he admitted to having had sexual relationships with a close friend's wife, his wife's aunt, a woman seeking a job, a local woman, several prostitutes, servants, and the daughter of a close friend.[29]

At this point I will state that the main quest in my life was to find a pure locus of love. If such a locus happened to be a woman, preferably wife, so much the better. But if in the absence of a woman such an intimacy could be established with a man, that too suited my purpose. I pined for friendship only with this object in mind. In friendship I insisted that I must be the sole object of love. To me, love meant complete identity – identity that makes one forget his own self and feel exquisite pleasure in doing so. I did chance to come across some women to satisfy my thirst for love – not for sex – but I was disappointed by both – men and women, in consequence of which my love turned into longing.

— Manilal Dwivedi, Atmavrittanta (1979)[30]

Death

In his autobiography, Atmavrittanta, Manilal states that he visited a brothel multiple times during his college years. As a result, he contracted syphilis, which developed into secondary and tertiary stages.[31] Manilal recorded an abscess on his neck in July 1898. In September, he developed jaundice and pleurisy. He died on the morning of 1  October 1898 while writing at his home in Nadiad.[5]

Reception
Plaque at Manilal's birth place

Manilal, along with his fellow Gujarati writer Govardhanram Tripathi, significantly contributed to Gujarati literature. The period of their activity (1885–1905) is recognised as the Mani-Govardhan Era rather than by a general terms like Sakshar Yuga or Pandit Yuga.[32] The scholar Anandshankar Dhruv publicly described Manilal as a Brahmanishtha (the one who steadily fixed in the consciousness of the Supreme Brahman, the Ultimate Reality).[22]

Manilal occupies a distinctive place in Gujarati literature. Throughout his life, he struggled at both a personal and public level to live up to the practical principles he elicited from his reading of the Kevalādvaita tradition. His vision combined an ardent advocacy of Aryan philosophy with a Hindu worldview. He endeavoured to publicise his opinions in order to counteract what he saw as the blind enthusiasm of his fellow Indians for Western culture. Manilal thought that the non-dualistic philosophy of Kevalādvaita, despite its complexity, contained important values which could inspire people to lead practical lives while remaining faithful to its ideals.[22]

Edwin Arnold, who visited Bhavnagar in the course of his tour in India, wrote in his book, The Light of Asia:

Nor does Poona or Bombay contain any Shastree, with clearer conclusions on Hindu theology and philosophy, better command of lucid language, or ideas more enlightened and profound than Mr. Manilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi, Professsor of Sanskrit in the Samaldas College here (Bhavnagar), whose book just published on the Raja Yoga ought to become widely known in Europe and to converse with whom has been a real privilege.[33]

Mahatma Gandhi, during his first stint in gaol in South Africa in January 1908, read widely in the literature of Western writers such as Tolstoy, Thoreau and Emerson to enlarge his vision and, among the masters of Indian philosophy, he turned to Manilal's book on Rāja yoga.[34]

Notes

    Citations
    1. Thaker 1983, pp. 14–15.
    2. Thaker 1983, pp. 15–16.
    3. Datta 1988, pp. 1130–1131.
    4. Topiwala, Soni & Dave 1990, p. 268.
    5. Thaker 1983, p. 38.
    6. Desai 2011, pp. 385–386.
    7. Chavda 1980, p. 733.
    8. Jhaveri 1978, pp. 101–104.
    9. George 1992, p. 126.
    10. Topiwala, Soni & Dave 1990, p. 23.
    11. Choudhuri 2016, p. 2267.
    12. Thaker 1983, p. 70.
    13. Choksi & Somani 2004, pp. 117, 124.
    14. Thaker 1983, p. 29.
    15. Thaker 1983, pp. 45–47.
    16. Yashaschandra 1995, p. 50.
    17. Chattopadhyaya 1999, p. 418.
    18. Thaker 1983, p. 31.
    19. Pandya 2004, p. 16.
    20. Raval 1987, pp. 198–199.
    21. Raval 1987, p. 199.
    22. Patel 2000, pp. 38–39.
    23. Ray 1981, p. 382.
    24. Raval 1987, p. 202.
    25. Thaker 1983, p. 26.
    26. Thaker 1983, pp. 33–36.
    27. Suhrud 1999, p. 193.
    28. Suhrud 1999, pp. 125–127.
    29. Suhrud 1999, p. 188.
    30. Suhrud 1999, p. 102.
    31. Thaker 1983, p. 19.
    32. Thaker 1983, p. 54.
    33. Thaker 1983, p. 25.
    34. Parel 1997, p. 6.

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    • Choksi, Mahesh; Somani, Dhirendra, eds. (2004). Gujarati Rangbhoomi: Riddhi Ane Ronak ગુજરાતી રંગભૂમિ: રિદ્ધિ અને રોનક [Compilation of Information regarding professional theatre of Gujarat] (in Gujarati). Ahmedabad: Gujarat Vishwakosh Trust. pp. 117, 124. OCLC 55679037.
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    Further reading

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