Bengal rebirth at a glance ANASUYA BASU ‘The Bengal renaissance, a literary, philosophical, social and cultural re- awakening, has been studied, debat- ed and argued by historians, social scientists and literary scholars. But to explain it in termsof sci- entific cognition is a rather uncon. ventional attempt that author Sub- rata Dasgupta undertakes in his new book The Bengal Renaissance, Identity and Creativity from Rammo- hun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. Dasgupta in his book has tried to understand the renaissanceand the ‘workings of the brilliant minds that ‘went into makingit in termsof psy: cho-analysis and from the perspec- tiveof philosophy of science. “It is not an attempt to dehumanise the entire phenomena but to empirically study the creative minds and see how the creators drew upon their knowledge,” he explains. Dasgupta’s abiding interest isin the life and life history of ‘the creative minds and in that he adds a new perspective to the study of the Bengal renaissance, commented Professor ‘Sukanta Chaudhuri in an interactive session on the newly- Author Subrata Dasgupta and Professor ‘Sukanta Chaudhuri at the interactive ‘session. Picture by Pabitra Das launched book at Oxford Bookstore on Thursday: Lauding Dasgupta’s thesis, Chaudhuri wondered: “If a certain number of creative individu. als brought about a renaissance, then why didn’tevery age have one?” While there are arguments about whether the intellectual endeavours in 19th Century Bengal can at all be called a renaissance, Dasgupta says: “There can be no doubt thata smatl community of outstanding individu- als existed during that era.” Chaudhuri, too, acknowledged “there is such a renaissance period of notable cultural era.” ‘And while there are various defi- nitions of renaissance, “it will be in- triguing to know whether renais- ‘sance can take place in different cities and in different cul and others, A notable omissi ies was Vidyasagar, pointed out Prof Chaudhuri. tures or what were the common factors among renaissance periods,” said Chaudhuri, ‘The book outlines the core work of Raja Rammohun Roy, Henry Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Datta, Bankim Chan- dra Chattopadhyay, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda nin this pantheon of luminar-