Derozio’s challenge to Indian tradition with reference to The Fakeer Of Jungheera

1. Derozio’s challenge to Indian tradition with
reference to The Fakeer Of Jungheera

2.  Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was
a poet, thinker, radical, and one
of the earliest Indian
educationists to disseminate
western learning and philosophy
among the young men of Bengal
was also crucially the first
modern Indian to write of the
incumbent nation extensively in
English.
Introduction

3. Derozio’s
Challenge
Caste
System
Sati-Pratha

4. The Social Malaise of Sati:
 At the ancient time there were many rules
and regulations in which one of the most
famous is ‘Sati’. ‘Sati – pratha’ was the high
influence on Indian mentality. In that time
women situations, conditions are very
pathetic. Sati is an obsolete Indian funeral
custom where a widow immolated herself on
her husband’s pyre. That is also describe in
‘The Fakeer of Jungheera’ very well by
Henry Derozio.
 Instead of belaboring upon the misery of
slavery, Derozio embarked upon a mission of
resolving some of the inherent evils of Hindu
society especially – ‘the practice of widow
burning’.
Sati – Pratha

5.  Derozio approvingly quotes a writer from the ‘‘Indian Magazine’’
and endorses the latter’s opinion that sati constitutes the most
barbaric and degrading aspect of Indian Society which can be
overcome through education and intellectual development.
 Nonetheless with all his self – assurance and animosity for con –
cremation, Derozio seems somewhat confused by cases of willful self –
immolation.
 During the nineteenth century many upper caste Hindu women
willfully committed sati mistakenly believing in the veracity of the
Hindu ritual, as if mesmerized into an abominable act through a long
process of socialization.

6.  The protagonist of the poem is a robber fakeer or a mendicant, who
belongs to some unidentified Muslim sect, while the heroine, the widow
Nuleeni, comes from an upper caste Bengali Hindu family.
 But still they love each other very much. In the intense bond of love
they forgot the society. They forgot their caste discrimination. They
challenged the man made norms of the society.
 Fakeer, bravely snatched her from the hands of so called upper-class
people. Here in this case we can say that the poem makes an
important stage in the use of social themes in literary texts endorsing
a syncretistic tradition quite popular in 19th century Bengal.
Caste system

7.  Derozio breaks all the norms of writing of the
contemporary poem writing. It was not easy for the
contemporary writers to break the established laws and
at the same challenging the upper-class of the cosecant.
 He wanted to remove the social evils that slowly
swallowed the society. This Hindu-Muslim love story
arose great sensation. The poet was marginalized in his
time.
 The poet through the impossible and bold story of love
affair between Hindu upper-class widow and a Muslim
lower class Fakeer reflected and criticized the evils of
Indian Society and challenged the Indian tradition.

8. THANK YOU