Odisha Review January - 2013

Past Significance
and Present Meaning in
Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Rebati

Dr. Shruti Das

Rebati the first recorded short story in Odia rather how to relate them in presenting the
literature was written by Fakir Mohan Senapati dialectics of a new unity in a post-colonial world.
and first published in 1898 (Pattnaik 61). The Nineteenth century was a significant
story presents a microcosmic view of colonial period in history when the British brought with
Odisha in the late nineteenth century, where non- them into India the enlightenment of the West. ‘…
Western orthodoxy and values of Western Enlightenment humanism and its legatees take
emancipation are at conflict with each other. In ‘humanity’ to be a function of the way in which
the story, a young adolescent girl Rebati is allowed man knows things. Its concern, accordingly, is with
to host aspirations of emancipation shown to her
the structure of epistemology or the basis and
by her father, Shyambandhu and a teacher named
validity of knowledge…. It changes the way in
Basudev; both influenced by Western humanistic which we have come to know the notion of Self’
values. She is happy in the comfortable space that
(Gandhi 29). This suggested a humanist
her family offers her education until killer epidemic,
valorization of man that is accompanied by a
cholera strikes and everything is taken away from
notion that some human beings are more human
her with the death of her parents. Rebati’s
than others may be due to their access to superior
untutored mind is unable to comprehend her
learning or because of their cognitive faculties. The
predicament in the face of utter neglect, sorrow,
colonizers believed that Western epistemological
guilt and poverty; she ultimately, succumbs to
structure needed to be implied in order to civilize
death. Today any interpretation of this colonial
their colonies which according to them were
text cannot be done without a contemporary
inhabited by humanist subclasses. Particularly in
Post-colonial evaluation. The interpretation of
India, this historical logic is illustrated in Thomas
Rebati has to come to terms with the tension
Babington Macaulay’s infamous minute of 1835
between historical values and modern evaluations.
regarding the introduction of English education in
This paper attempts to analyze how the colonial
or past significance of the depiction of the social colonial India.
history in Rebati has meaning for the modern The intrinsic superiority of Western
reader in the present context. The analysis shows literature is indeed fully admitted by those
that the problem here is not whether or not to members of the committee who support the
accept the orthodoxy of a world of non-Western oriental plan of education. . . It is, I believe, no
culture and a different world offering Western exaggeration to say that all the historical
humanistic rationalism as points of reference, but information which has been collected in the

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Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may the desire to give Rebati an education welled up
be found in the paltry abridgements used at in his heart”. Rebati is excited at this prospect
preparatory schools in England. (Said 1983.12). and rushes inside to her mother and grandmother
The English thought that India suffered announcing that she was going to study, that she
from civilizational inferiority and Western was going to learn, to read. The mother who is a
education was the only answer to the part of the new generation is agreeable to the idea
“pathological deficiency of the native mind” of educating Rebati, her girl child, whereas, the
(Gandhi 30). grandmother finds it unacceptable.
Through his narrative in Rebati the writer The conflict in the narrative compels us
Fakir Mohan probably subverts this and points to understand the past significance, the underlying
to the actual harm that is done to the society by history that ‘requires the enlistment of our
means of such subtle ideological coercion. Rebati sympathies and antipathies, the “basic directing
a young girl of ten lives in “Patapur- a sleepy little feelings” which account for one’s being pulled
village in Hariharpur subdivision in the district of along by a story’ (Mink 111). It establishes a sense
Cuttack” (St Pierre 9). Her father belongs to the of an outcome that renders the story followable.
new class of Indians who had, after the Fakir Mohan’s historical narrative in Rebati
implementation of Lord Macaulay’s Minutes on subverts a political and cultural component and
Indian Education in 1835, received an education transfigures it into an imaginative universality. Here
in the British system. He was “the zamindar’s it is relevant to note that, “The features which
accountant… responsible for collecting taxes. His enable a story to flow and us to follow, then, are
salary was two rupees a month, but he could earn the clues to the nature of historical understanding.
a little more by adjusting rent receipts and land An historical narrative does not demonstrate the
records; all told, he made at least four rupees… necessity of events but makes them intelligible by
he was quite comfortable. His family never unfolding the story which connects their
complained of wanting for anything”. The family significance”. In Rebati the narrative exposes the
comprised Shyambandhu, his wife, his old mother
social conflict concerning women education and
and young daughter, Rebati. Rebati the apple of
emancipation and problematises the reality of
everybody’s eye, was close to her father and often
non- Western culture and Western rationalistic
in the evenings sat beside him and recited prayer
values. The grandmother’s sharp reaction to the
songs and hymns that she had learnt orally by
listening to him. At this point the narrator idea of educating Rebati: ‘What good will it do
introduces Basudev, a young man who has come you ? How does book-learning help a girl ? It’s
to the village as a school teacher. Basudev, who enough to know how to cook, bake, churn butter
is an orphan, gains the sympathy of and decorate walls with rice-paste’ (St Pierre 13),
Shyambandhu’s family and endears himself to is a pointer to the fact that women education and
them. He is a regular visitor to the family and as emancipation was very much looked down upon
such becomes a catalyst in furthering the narrative. in those times. On the one hand, the grandmother
He tells Shyambandhu about a “school at Cuttack implores her son not to allow Rebati to study:
where girls could study and also learn crafts”. ‘Shyam, is Rebi going to study? Why should she
Shyambandhu, initiated in Western rationalism, study, son? What good is that for a girl ?’, and on
immediately sees hope for his daughter: “instantly, the other, the young girl jumps with excitement.

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Odisha Review January - 2013

‘Rebati was furious at her grandmother. “You silly humanism. She would rather, her grand-daughter
old fool !” she snorted. Turning to her father, she Rebati mastered the skills of homemaking and got
begged him, “Father, I do want to study.” married to a man of her parents’ choice; in this
case Basudev. Although it may appear sacrilegious
“And so you will,’ said Shambandhu.
today, it was a practice in Odia society to marry
With the sanction of her rationalist father, girls off by the time they were twelve to thirteen
and her teacher, Basudev, Rebati began her years of age. This phenomenon bore validity inside
education. Much to the irritation of her its own limited society and carried no conviction
grandmother, picture books were bought for her with outsiders from a more rationalistic world. The
and on the auspicious occasion of Sri Panchami, narrator uses gentle irony to underline this. He
she formally began learning the alphabets. In two says: “What Rebati made of all this she alone
years time she had progressed a lot. Though she knew, but a change certainly came over her” (St
loved Rebati, yet, the grandmother still harboured Pierre 15). The contradiction herein is that, Rebati
misgivings about Rebati’s education. Instead, she abandons all her dreams of education and
is more interested in arranging Rebati’s marriage emancipation and willingly falls prey to an
with Basudev as he belongs to the same caste as irrational prevalent system that she herself does
theirs. not understand.
The non-Western/ Odia culture to which The narrative subverts reality and offers
the grandmother belonged, naturally desired to a critique of the morality of the text. It questions
preserve its own identity and pursue its own the genesis of the work and its relevant evaluation.
happiness. Montesquieu, who was interested in “… To make this point from a somewhat different
the social and political institutions of non-European angle, one might refer to two basic functions of
societies rightly observed that, “all human beings literature: on the one hand the work of art as a
naturally desired to preserve themselves, live in product of its time, a mirror of its age, a historical
society and pursue happiness, and loved their reflection of the society to which both the author
family. His conception of self preservation was and the original audience belonged. On the other
much deeper … and involved not just staying alive hand, it is surely no idealism to assume that the
but absence of terror, or an oppressive and work of art is not merely a product, but a
pervasive sense of fear, vulnerability and “producer” of its age: not merely a mirror of the
unpredictability…. Although reason was a most past, but a lamp to the future” (Weimann 55-
valuable capacity, it had its limits. It could never 56).The narrative exposes the reader to the
suppress or eliminate basic human passions and devastation, both social and economic, brought
must come to terms with them. (Parekh 58- about by the killer pandemic cholera. Death tolls
59).The old grandmother loved her family very in India itself in the nineteenth century due to
much. The invasion of Western rationalism and cholera outbreaks were enormous. According to
all that it sought to revolutionize posited a threat the data given in the Wikipedia ‘deaths in India
to the familiar environment of the old lady in the between 1817 and 1860 are estimated to have
narrative. Woman emancipation was a concept exceeded fifteen million people. Another twenty-
unthinkable in the then Odia society which was three million died between 1865 and 1917’
primarily patriarchic in nature. The deep human (Wikipedia.org/wiki/cholera). The people of the
need to cling on to non-rationalistic social laws is period could not comprehend the enormity of the
exhibited in the character of the grandmother, who tragedy and in their own simple ways sought to
feels threatened by the pluralism of rational find some means of understanding the unstoppable

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January - 2013 Odisha Review

deaths. Since no possible reason or solution was village’. Rebati’s family was completely isolated;
available to them they found a scapegoat in the no help was forthcoming nor expected. The only
unnatural: ‘the demonic deity’. Fakir Mohan with loyal friend of the family was Basudev, the school
delicate irony reproduces a situation familiar to teacher. Rebati offers a microcosmic view of
rural colonial India, abjectly poor and uncared colonial India where exploitation was the
for. He presupposes the impact of the text on the keyword. After the epidemic, the isolated family
reader. He calls upon the aesthetic perception of was left with an old lady, a young girl, a few cows
the post-colonial reader to understand the social and the land that Shyambandhu had possessed.
and economic devastation caused by such ‘Within three months of Shyambandhu’s demise
calamities and the exploitation of the victims the zamindar expropriated Shyambandhu’s cows-
thereafter. apparently he had not deposited the last tax
collection'. Fakir Mohan throughout the narrative
One fine Phalgun day, like a bolt out of
the blue, a cholera epidemic struck. has maintained that Shyambandhu was an honest
man and ‘had always regarded depositing the
Early in the morning the news of money as sacred and would not rest in peace until
Shyambandhu coming down with cholera spread every paise of the collection was in the zamindar’s
through the village. As always, the immediate treasury.' The zamindars were next in the hierarchy
response was to bolt the doors and windows and after the British colonial masters. It was through
keep out of the path of the demonic deity, as their agency that exploitation filtered down to the
though the evil old hag was out with her basket lowest rung of society. Appealing to the anti-
and brooms sweeping up heads. colonial modern sensibility, the narrator says: ‘The
Shyambandhu’s wife and mother were truth was that for a long time the zamindar had
soon driven out of their minds by worry and had his eyes on the cows. He also took back the
anxiety. Rebati ran in and out of the house, crying three and half acres he had given to
for help… help was neither expected nor Shyambandhu’. The pathetic plight of the affected
forthcoming (St Pierre 16-17). family is further enunciated as remnants of pride
are visible through abject penury under economic
Instead of being sympathetic, neighbours devastation:
and people of the community rejected the family
and treated them as pariahs. The epidemic The team of bullocks had already been
generated fear of such dimension that people sold off for seventeen and half rupees; with what
became almost paranoid. Instead of helping their remained of the sum after the funeral expenses,
brethren they deserted even their own kith and the grandmother and Rebati hung on for a month.
kin bolting doors and windows to ‘keep out of In the month following they had begun to pawn
the path of the demonic deity. People conceived household items – a brass bowl one day, a plate
of cholera as an evil old woman who was out the next.
with her basket and broom to sweep up heads. Basu visited them every evening and
There was no awareness or education stayed with them till bedtime. He offered them
propagated about the disease to prove to the money, but they would not touch it. Once or twice
people that they were wrong. he pressed some on them, but the coins lay idle
The infection spread in the family like on the shelf. He had no choice but to accept the
quick fire and affected Rebati’s mother. ‘By couple of paise the old woman produced every
midday the news of her death was all over the eight or ten days to buy them provisions. The

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Odisha Review January - 2013

house was falling apart, the straw roof was worn vehicle for tension discharge… and as a means
thin, but try as he might Basu couldn’t get it re- of intimidating others and inducing guilt. After
thatched; the bales of hay he bought with two death of her son Shyambandhu and his wife; and
rupees of his own money rotted in the backyard. the action of the zamindar, the small world of the
Basudev had promised Rebati’s father on grandmother crumbles. Buckling under grief,
poverty and frustration she finds a scapegoat in
his death bed that he would look after the family.
her grand-daughter Rebati. ‘The old woman’s
But the pathetic pride exhibited by the
grandmother evokes an imaginative universality. vision had declined and she had a wild look about
her. She no longer cried as much and took to
The reader is given to understand that after the
death of Shyambandhu Basudev would take on heaping curses and abuse on Rebati: the wretched
girl was at the root of all her misery and misfortune;
the responsibilities of the family, perhaps even
her education had caused it all – first her son had
marry Rebati. But nothing like this happens; the
narrator parodies the reader’s expectation and died, then her daughter-in-law; the bullocks had
been sold off; the farm hand had left; the cows
purposely evokes certain responses in the
beginning of the story only to frustrate them later had been taken back by the zamindar; and now
her eyes had gone bad. Rebati was the evil-eye,
on. “This can serve not only a critical purpose
the hell-devil, the ill omen’(St Pierre 18-19). The
but can even have a poetic effect” (Jauss 17).
The reality of the story points out that the truth of grandmother’s anxiety and frustration found
release in abusing Rebati. Rebati’s education was
life continually denies the lies of poetic fiction.
not the convention of the times, girls were only to
The grandmother, the only living relative be taught kitchen craft and how to take care of
of Rebati, instead of piling her love on the child in their family with subservience; anything otherwise
her moment of crisis vents her frustration on the especially, Western education was looked upon
child. She becomes a typical case of Passive- with suspicion and therefore she blamed Rebati’s
Aggressive (negativistic) Personality Disorder. education for the misfortune that had befallen her
According to Ekleberry in The Dual Diagnosis family. Often irritable she would call out to Rebati
Pages, individuals with passive-aggressive “Rebati! Rebi! You fire! You ashes!”(9/ 27).
(negativistic) personality disorder are ambivalent
The grandmother is a construct of
within their relationships and conflicted between
their dependency needs and their desire for self- patriarchic society. The ironic voice of the narrator
tries to represent the “nationalist trepidation about
assertion. They express hostility towards the
people they see as causing their problems. ‘These the ‘Westernisation’ of Indian women”(Gandhi 96)
through her. Fakir Mohan’s sensitive portrayal of
individuals are noted for the stormy nature of their
Rebati brings to focus the conflict between so-
interpersonal relationships…. They are resentfully
quarrelsome and irritable. They often feel like a called cultural authenticity and Western
emancipatory education of the Indian woman.
victim. Central to the disorder is a pervasive
pattern of argumentativeness and oppositional Leela Gandhi in her book, Post Colonial Theory:
A Critical Introduction, observes the extent to
behaviour with defeatist and negative attitudes…
which the nation authenticates its distinct cultural
These individuals inflict a great deal of discomfort
on others through the use of their anxiety and identity through its women. She talks of Partha
Chatterjee’s work on anti-colonial nationalism:
emotional symptoms…. They engage in
grumbling, moody complaints, and sour …drawing attention to the subtle nuances of the
pessimism; these behaviours serve as both a nationalist compromise with the invasive

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hegemony of colonial/Western values. Indian Rebati whose vibrant presence invaded

nationalists… dealt with the compulsive claims of the first part of the story recedes to the margins in
Western civilization by dividing the domain of the second half. She could be termed as a
culture into two distinct spheres- the material and ‘gendered subaltern’. In her essay “Can the
the spiritual. It was hard to contest the superiority subaltern speak?” Spivak elaborates on contesting
and domination of the West in the material sphere. representational systems, here anti-colonial
But on the other hand, as texts like Gandhi’s Hind patriarchy, that violently displaces or silences the
Swaraj proclaimed, no cultural rival could ‘gendered subaltern’. She writes:
possibly match India’s spiritual essence. Thus,
Between patriarchy and imperialism,
as Chatterjee writes, while it was deemed
subject-constitution and object-formation, the
necessary to cultivate and imitate the material
figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine
accomplishments of Western civilization, it was
nothingness, but a violent shuttling which is the
compulsory to simultaneously preserve and police
displaced figuration of the ‘third-world woman’
the spiritual properties of national culture. And in
the catalogue of the nation’s spiritual effects, the caught between tradition and modernisation.
home and its keeper acquired a troublesome pre- (1988. p. 306).
eminence…. 'The home in its essence must remain Her essay argues that the ‘gendered
unaffected by the profane activities of the material subaltern’ disappears because we never hear her
world- and woman is its representation.' speak about herself. She is simply the medium
As an anti-colonial critique the narrative through which competing discourses represent
necessitates that the grandmother in Rebati their claims. Rebati, the ‘gendered subaltern’ in
becomes the police and the preserver of the context, is forced to become a ‘third-world
spiritual essence of national culture, representing woman’ caught in the teeth of patriarchy and
the nationalist possessiveness about ‘native imperialism. Fakir Mohan’s social critique in the
women’. She tries to guard her grand daughter narrative posits Rebati as caught between
Rebati from the invasion of foreign values in the modernization and a tradition that grudges her
form of education, which is supposedly demonic aspirations and holds her responsible for defeating
and possibly out to destroy the spiritual essence her spiritual duties as an Indian woman. The vibrant
alias cultural identity of the nation. Hence, though girl who was once not afraid to voice her desire
unreasonable, she blames Rebati, Basudev and for education:”Father, I do want to study”(St
formal education for all that has happened to her Pierre 14); is suddenly muted. As a ‘gendered
family. Education a ‘profane activity’ of the subaltern’ she literally disappears from centre-
material world should not have been nurtured. stage and is relegated to the margins of her little
Rebati, the girl child, the representative of the world. She is violently shuttled between nature
future of the nation, the carrier of the cultural and culture and assumes the displaced figure of
identity should not have been enthusiastic about the silent ‘third-world woman’. Accused and
education. Now that she had been, it was her blamed for things beyond human control, Rebati
turn for retribution : her suffering and the abuse shrinks away from life itself. ’Rebati’s presence
that she was subjected to was apparently justified. no longer filled the house; gone were the days
The grandmother tartly comments: “What when she would be heard mourning loudly.
medicine can there be for an illness of one’s own Nobody heard her voice, nobody saw her out
making!’ Rebati had brought the fever on herself of doors. Her large brooding eyes, awash with
by daring to study” (St Pierre 23). silent tears, looked like blue lilies set in water.

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Odisha Review January - 2013

Her heart and mind broken, day and night were past and the future, the real and the aesthetic into
alike to her. The sun brought her no light, the night a timeless oneness.
no darkness; the world was an aching void.
Works Cited :
Rebati is not allowed to disappear into ‘pristine
nothingness’ instead lives in ‘an aching void’ as a Cholera outbreaks and pandemics. From Wikipedia,
victim of ‘competing discourses’ of the time till it the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
finally kills her. The competing discourses in this Cholera_outbreaks_and_pandemics
historical context refer to Western humanistic Ekleberry, Sharon C. , Talk:Passive-aggressive
rationalism and a non-Western Odia culture with behavior/Sandbox. From Wikipedia, the free
its inherent orthodoxy. Rebati’s death is definitely encyclopedia Created to hold unformatted data from
tragic; but the significance of what it expresses in article. - Dreadlocke 23:48, 4 June 2006(UTC). http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APassive-
plot and character, in its mimetic and expressive aggressive_behavior/Sandbox
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Introduction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Rebati with its rich historical significance Rpt. 2007.
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frame of reference. Thus, past significance and Marxism and Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary
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in its interdependence, may illuminate either- the University of Illinois Press, 1988.
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historical significance of the work of art. Fakir Literary History. Ed. Ralph Cohen. London: Routledge
Mohan can be interpreted in the same light as his and Kegan Paul, 1974.
narratives which are subversively anti-colonial,
engage in a meaningful relationship with the
contemporary world. The imaginative universality Dr. Shruti Das, Udayashree, Narayan Mishra Lane,
of Fakir Mohan’s narrative in Rebati fuses the Mahatab Road, Cuttack-12.

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