Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay on Love and Sex

Abstract

The Bengali novelist Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay (1876-1938) of colonial India and the French philosophe of Enlightenment Europe Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) stand poles apart from each other—temporally, territorially, and culturally. Although Sharatchandra is reputed to have been familiar with a number of romantic writers of England, he does not seem to be acquainted with any literati of Europe, especially of Enlightenment France. Nevertheless, as this article contends, the Bengali writer’s attitude to human sensuality and sentiment or, more precisely, to love, sex, and marriage, betrays an interesting similarity to that of the French author. An upshot of this comparatist exercise is that we gain a fresh outlook on both men’s views on human condition that blurs, as it were, the distinction between modern European and modernizing and Westernizing colonial Indian mentalité.