Nirad C. Chaudhuri - Social Views and Writing Style

Social Views and Writing Style

Although he was highly critical of the post-independence Congress party establishment, Chaudhuri was more sympathetic to the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement in India. He refused to criticise the destruction of mosques: "“Muslims do not have the slightest right to complain about the desecration of one mosque in Ayodhya. From 1000 AD every temple from Kathiawar to Bihar, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas has been sacked and ruined. Not one temple was left standing all over northern India. They escaped destruction only where Muslim power did not gain access to them for reasons such as dense forests. Otherwise, it was a continuous spell of vandalism. No nation with any self-respect will forgive this. What happened in Ayodhya would not have happened had the Muslims acknowledged this historical argument even once.”"

Chaudhuri was also deeply distressed by what he saw as the deep hypocrisy in Bengali social life and in particular those that resulted from class and caste distinctions. His historical research revealed to him that the rigid Victorianesque morality of middle class Bengali women was a socially enforced construct, that had less to do with religion, choice and judgment, but more to do with upbringing, social acceptance and intergenerational transference of values.

His prose was highly influenced by Sanskrit and the older version of the Bengali language, the Shadhubhasha (সাধুভাষা). He had little respect for the proletarian language, Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিতভাষা), which he regarded as being common in taste and scope. He avoided the use of words and expressions originating from Arabic, Urdu and Persian that are very common in modern Bengali (though not as common as in Hindi).