‘Rajmohan’s Wife’: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s English novel was a true potboiler

The figure of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, author of fourteen novels, strides over Bengali – and Indian – literature like a colossus. And yet many readers are not familiar with his very first novel, which was written not in Bengali but in English.

Like that other great Bengali writer, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Bankim began writing in English before switching over to his “mother tongue.” Rajmohan’s Wife, published in 1684, is widely regarded as being the first Indian novel written in English. Some have even claimed that it is the first Asian novel in English.

This slim 125-page book is set in feudal, rural Bengal and contains within its pages all the elements of a modern-day potboiler – burglaries, abductions, old houses with secret passageways, thwarted romance, and betrayals all round. The story is told with tongue-in-cheek humour and poetic descriptions are woven throughout along with some commentary on the plight against women in 19th century Bengal.

The perfect man

The story revolves around three families in the village of Radhaganj on the banks of the Madhumati. Those of the Ghose cousins – Mathur and Madhav – who are from a zamindari background and could not be more different from one another, and the family of Rajmohan, whose wife is Madhav’s sister-in-law….

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