The Store of Your Mother is Full of Jewels: The Idea of the Nation for Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Abstract

The utterance of the name Michael Madhusudan Dutt calls forth the myth of a prodigal son who “returned” to his home turf after some spectacularly failed attempts of being a part of the great literary canon of English literature. However, a closer probe in his life and works suggest that he had a complex inner as well as outward journey all through his life which did not indicate clear cut phases of antinationalism-nationalism or prodigality-return. His life and works displayed a curious mixture of contradictory purposes at the same time. This paper is an attempt to establish, with a close inspection of his major literary works, letters, and some biographical details taken side by side, how his nationalism did not subscribe to a particular dominant idea, but rather operated at different levels. His rebellious ideas about life and literary creativity did not permeate into his idea of the nation, which, in his mind, was indispensable from his idea of women. Although he experimented with various literary forms and attempted to interpret the Hindu myths and epics from a novel perspective, at the core he held a rather conventional idea of a nation centred on a feminized geo-body: the country as the archetypal, nurturing mother.