Anandamath

Novel by the Bengali nationalist
author Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
(1838–1894). It is set in eighteenthcentury Bengal during the so-called
Sanyasi Rebellion, which invloved
bands of Hindu and Muslim militant
ascetics. Both groups fought with the
British East India Company for control over the region.
Historical inquiry suggests that the
roots of this conflict lay in the extreme
social tensions in Bengali society,
particularly changes in land ownership
patterns and the havoc wreaked by
the great famine of 1770–1771.
Chatterjee was an ardent Indian nationalist and portrayed the Sanyasi
Rebellion as a struggle by Mother India’s
loyal children to expel the parasitic
British invaders from her shores.
Although the novel was set in an earlier
era to avoid problems with the British
authorities, Anandamath is clearly allegorical and nationalistic, and it is viewed
by contemporary critics as Chatterjee’s
way to symbolize the need for continuing
the struggle against British imperialism in
the mid-nineteenth century.
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Anandamath