Reading Benjamin Franklin’s life story in Bareilly

ABSTRACT

This essay follows the print history of Benjamin Franklin’s life story. It appears first in William and Robert Chambers’ The Moral Class Book (1839) in Edinburgh and later in the Bareilly Tattvabodhini Sabha’s Niti Pradip (1870). As we juxtapose the English Franklin alongside the Hindi Franklin, it becomes possible to see the pliancy and polysemic character of a life story that emerges at the intersections of history and literature. It absorbs different meanings for readers separated by race, nation, language and gender and becomes an unpredictable vehicle for contradictory aspirations among male and female readers. At times illuminating a commitment to entrepreneurial and working class aspirations, particularly those of printer-publishers, it signals an interest in modernity and its institutions. At the same time, the themes of publicness and statesmanship make Franklin’s life an unusual pedagogical device for women readers in late colonial India. As we trace the Franklin life story through shifting linguistic and interpretative frames, it calls attention to the fraught dynamic in cultural and educational debates of the late colonial period in north India.

KEYWORDS:

• Life story
• Hindi print culture
• education
• translation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Griffith, Progress of Education, 1870-71, 29A.

2. See Dodson, Orientalism, Empire.

3. See Naim, “Prize Winning Adab,” 290–314.

4. The many how-to-do domestic manuals of the period painstakingly tabulate, organize and present housekeeping practices, home remedies for children, region-specific recipes and stitching patterns. See Nijhawan for Hindi journals addressed to women. Nijhawan, Women and Girls.

5. Bareilly Tattvabodhini Sabha, Niti Pradip.

6. Naim, “Prize Winning Adab,” 292.

7. Rai, Laksmi Sarsvati Samvad, 3–4. The book was introduced in the syllabus for primary schools in Punjab in 1883.

8. The English textbook is 168 pages long while the Hindi version is just 68 pages.

9. For greater detail see Gandotra, “What did Sundaria Read?”

10. For other implications of the word ‘portable’ see Hofmeyr, Portable Bunyan.

11. Arnold and Blackburn, Eds. Telling Lives, 7.

12. Shivaprasad, Vamamanoranjan.

13. Hagiographies, horoscopes, genealogies are all included in the pre-modern articulations of life historical forms. Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives, 7.

14. Parmanand, Pativrata Striyon.

15. Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives, 7–8; and Booth, How to Make it, 32. A gradual hardening of disciplinary boundaries over time may have pushed the analysis of life stories firmly in the direction of literature in some instances, but the ambiguities of the genre remain an active source of interest for scholars of both literature and history.

16. MacNeill “Heavy Lifting,” 5–14.

17. Booth, How to Make it, 4, 10, 19.

18. Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives, 9–11.

19. Booth, May Her Likes; and Hofmeyr, Portable Bunyan.

20. Booth, How to Make it, 4.

21. Booth, May Her Likes, xxix.

22. Chambers, Moral Class Book.

23. Mary Carryl, for instance, is a faithful servant who is rewarded by her mistresses in the most peculiar way: upon death she is allowed to share the space reserved for their graves. Helen Walker’s selfless resolve to save her sister’s life can also be seen as self-harming. The tragic Madame Villacerfe incongruously decides to leave her fortune to the very surgeon who is the cause of her premature death. Even the life stories that celebrate women who defy all odds, like the brave Grace Darling who rescues people from imminent death, are explicitly endorsing self-sacrifice. Moral Class Book, 26, 27, 144, 145, 147, 148, 153, 154. Given this range of details from the textbook, it is not surprising that the Chambers brothers print list only includes one book on domestic economy and cooking for women readers. Chambers, Catalogue, 12,14, 16.

24. Chambers, Moral Class Book, 33.

25. Ibid.

26. Chambers, Catalogue, 12,14, 16.

27. Chambers, Moral Class Book, 29, 30, 31.

28. See note 20 above.

29. Booth, How to Make it, 9, 19.

30. Chambers, Memoir, 91.

31. Ibid., 90.

32. This is not the only instance of the Chambers brothers invoking the memoirs or autobiographical accounts of other printers and booksellers before him. They provide him with an “example … to follow”. Among these many bookseller accounts he also references Samuel Johnson’s father’s bookstall. Chambers, Memoir, 146–147, 151.

33. Chambers, Memoir, 169.

34. Ibid., 90, 169.

35. Ibid., 154, 161.

36. Blumhardt’s catalogue of Bengali books indicates several adaptations and translations of the book. Blumhardt, Catalogue of Bengali, 17. Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar is also known to have translated and adapted several educational books by the Chambers brothers.

37. Letter from John Bradshaw to E. B. Powell, Selections from the Records, 1875, Volume 44; Report on the Committee, xiii.

38. Kempson, Progress of Education, 1869–70, 91; and Griffith, Progress of Education, 1870–71, 60–61.

39. For more detail see Gandotra, “What did Sundaria Read?”

40. Matthew Kempson (Head of Bareilly College and Director of Public Instruction, North Western Provinces) called upon the Bareilly Tattvabodhini Sabha to translate works from Sanskrit into Hindi. They translated the Hitopdesha and the Mahabharata into Hindi. Kempson, Progress of Education, 1862–1863, 23 A.

41. It engaged in debates, All of which were intended to “reform and revitalize” all aspects of experience – social, cultural, educational and religious. Mukhopadhyay, “Attitudes Towards,” 14.

42. The Rohilkhand Literary Society established as a voluntary association in 1865 and had 19 members, Hindus and Muslims. Robinson, Separatism, 85. Freitag, Collective Action, 62–66.

43. The eleventh century Tahzib al-Akhlaq by Ibn Maskawaihi was a philosophical treatise on ethical practice that reworked Aristotelian ideas into Arabic. It became the model for many later treatises. Two Persian works within the akhlaqi tradition became standard textbooks in madrasas, maktabs and households in nineteenth century colonial north India: Nasir al-Din Tusi’s thirteenth century Akhlaq-i-Nasiri and Muhammad ibn Asad Jalal al-Din’s fifteenth century Akhlaq-i Jalali.

44. Pernau, Emotions and Modernity, 52, 72.

45. Ibid., 73.

46. Powell, “Old Books in New Bindings” in Sengupta and Ali Eds. Knowledge Production, 200–201; and Pernau, “Teaching Emotions,” 227, 234.

47. Pernau, Emotions and Modernity, 71–95.

48. I use Pernau’s formulation here.

49. Arnold and Blackburn, Telling Lives, 4.

50. Bareilly Tattvabodhini Sabha, Niti Pradip, 33.

51. When considered from an altogether different perspective, in the late colonial period, even when writers were well known public figures, they often chose to tell their own life story elliptically. Indirection, deflection, elusiveness and anonymity become familiar strategies in attempts at life writing in late colonial India.

52. Orsini, “Pandit, Printers and Others” in Gupta and Chakrabarty Eds. Print Areas, 103–138; and Stark, Empire of Books, 157–163.

53. Teachers and students at Delhi College translated into Urdu books on analytical geometry, optics and astronomy. Goldsmith’s History of England, Plutarch’s Lives and Abercombie’s Mental Philosophy all found their way into Urdu. On the other hand, at Fort William College scribes were transforming elaborate story cycles and poetry into simple Urdu. Naim, “Prize Winning Adab” in Metcalf Ed. Moral Conduct, 290–314.

54. See for instance this four part textbook: Ramjasan, Stri Shiksha Subodhini.

55. See note 17 above.

56. Misra, Nariratnamala; Parmanand, Pativrata Striyon; and Lala, Rajasthan ki Vir Raniyan.

57. Lala, Bharat ki Shuja.

58. Ibid., 1.

59. Ibid., 114.

60. Misra, Nariratnamala, 161–167.