The Genius of Calcutta
Eric Weiner ‘s ‘The Geography of Genius’ is a frustrating read. It gets the macro picture right but the micro details are often horribly wrong. I can only talk about the chapter on Calcutta, which has the tagline ‘genius is chaotic’. I read it with much anticipation but was rather bemused by the end of it. There is much to commend starting with the selection of Calcutta as one of the cities where geniuses have clustered together during a specific period of time in its history. In the western imagination these days, Calcutta is, somewhat unreflectively, linked with the activities of Mother Teresa and the writings of Dominique Lapierre (author of ‘The City of Joy’). So Weiner’s book chapter is a much needed corrective.
I think his thesis- the process of creativity is often chaotic- is broadly correct. But the Chapter starts with the eye popping claim that Bengal Renaissance is “named after the main ethnic group in Calcutta”. Confusing Bengali (the ethnic group that speaks the vernacular) with Bengal (the name of the province in British India) is a big error. Bengal Renaissance was not exclusively a ‘Bengali’ phenomenon. C V Raman was as much part of the Bengal Renaissance as Satyen Bose. Nor was it exclusively Indian. One of the leading protagonists of Bengal Renaissance was David Hare; another was Dr Mouat.
Later Weiner describes Rabindranath Tagore’s father as a landlord and merchant who traveled often. It is safe to say that Weiner has conflated the biographies of Tagore’s grandfather and father. Dwarkanath was arguably the first native industrial entrepreneur of modern India. Debendranath, his son (and Rabindranath’s father) hated his father’s commercial activities and proactively closed down Dwarkanath’s business enterprises after his death. Debendranath was a landlord alright but he certainly was not a merchant.
Despite such errors, the chapter is definitely worth a read. Weiner has not really explained how Calcutta became the hotbed of creativity during the nineteenth century but he has taken the first step- he has recognised that it was a hotbed of creativity. Thanks to Mother Teresa and Dominique Lapierre, we are running the risk of forgetting that memorable fact about the City
