Here in Babur Upakhyan, the Babu is established as a new species in the literary landscape of Bengal, a species obeying its own 'law of existence', if we read literally: 'Dharmmapratipalan' is the term used in the Bengali original. The author uses the form of a Charita, life-story, which is in keeping with the importance given to narratives about individual lives in Bengal and all of India. So here, as early as 1821, can be traced the beginning of a typical literary figure that was to play an important part in nineteenth-century Bengal and even after. The Babu is envisaged as something new, and at the same time as a marked deviation from the general norms of society. In this work, the Babu is not just meant as a satire alone but gave rise to a certain ambiguity to the use of the term. The name Babu started getting attached to names as an honorific indicating no negligible amount of status. So the use of it in this satire of 1821 must not necessarily be interpreted as the beginning of its slow metamorphosis into an insult, it is rather a doubling of meaning which remains productive in the determination of identity of his very Bengali middle class, Bhadra folk society throughout the century. |