“Kirtan O Gramin Krishti” (“Kirtan and Village Culture”): The Final Chapter of Hitesranjan Sanyal’s Bangla Kirtaner Itihas (“History of Bengal Kirtan”): Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

Båõgla Kîrtaner Itihås (“History of Bengal Kîrtan”) is more than a musicological-cum-historical account of a type of devotional song
(kîrtan) much cultivated in the Bengal region of eastern India and Bangladesh. This prize-winning volume by the late socio-cultural historian, Hitesranjan Sanyal (1939–1988), is in fact a socio-cultural history of the movement of bhakti (devotion) to Ûrî Krishna inspired by the Bengal-born ecstatic Ûrî Krishna-Chaitanya (aka Caitanya or Gauråõga, 1486–1533) and perpetuated as the Caitanya or Gauriya (Bengali) Vaishnava tradition or sampradåya. As such, it is an extended essay on a theme close to the heart of the author: how an initially relatively simple, expressive egalitarian mode of popular Vaishnava bhakti—as epitomized in kîrtan (song in praise of
Lord Krishna)—could impart sophisticated religio-aesthetic refinement across caste, class and gender boundaries while building self-respect, stiffening the backbone and engendering solidarity among the non-elite rural population of pre-colonial Bengal. The book is a labor of love by a vigorous scholar whose research was opening up several sectors of Bengali socio-cultural history. Among these are the distribution and social implications of Bengali temples, social aspects of the Gandhian initiatives and the Gauriya Vaishnava movement itself.  His sudden illness and death in 1988 at age forty-eight deprived us (and the Bengal he loved) of an indefatigable
researcher, dear friend and exemplary socio-cultural historian.