Sailen Debnath

Sailen Debnath (born in 1958) is a Bengali Indian writer with versatile interest and Head of the Department of History at Alipurduar College, an affiliated college of the University of North Bengal in the state of West Bengal, India. The themes of Sailen's writings are religious, philosophical and historical in nature. His writings tend to define ideas; and such instances can be witnessed in his definitions of Western culture, Bengali culture, and the concepts of Siva, Saraswati, Chitragupta and Yama.

Themes of writings
Sailen's pioneering works have brought to light the scientific interpretation and the hidden meanings of the Hindu pantheon and myths, explanation of the concept of secularism both Western and Indian, the history of West Bengal since 1947 and North Bengal since independence as well. Sailen himself is the editor of the 'East-Indian Journal of Social Sciences' ISSN-2277-4483

Though more interested in intellectual history, history of ideas, philosophy and religion; with equal spirit, Sailen, in pursuance of William Wilson Hunter, has done justice to the fields of local history and micro-history. As to micro-history, Sailen has dealt with the history of Dooars, Siliguri, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Chilapata forest, Mainaguri, Buxa Fort, Kamatapur or the Gorkhaland Movement, any reader may find some new additions in his analytical writings.

His book ‘The Meanings of Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Myths’ published by Rupa & Co. has given an alternative version of the Hindu deities and myths. The discourse put forward by Sailen introduces that the Hindu gods and goddesses are in fact symbols of ancient scientific ideas developed by the Indian seers in the long course of their scientific disquisitions and discoveries. He has analyzed the Hindu deities and myths in the light of the knowledge of neurology, physiology and endocrinology. The true worshipper is, according to him, one who understands the meaning hidden in the deity-like symbols and follows the meanings in day-to-day life; there is no purpose in taking the deities into and confining them to temples. Sailen further says of the meanings of the Hindu pantheon, “One who knows the true meaning of the Hindu gods and goddesses and the great myths, will find a new horizon of psychology, science and philosophy. There will then remain no question of polytheism and monotheism; and of course, no question of worship, but realization through pursuit. As a religion, true Hinduism has no quarrel with any religion of the world. The so called secularists as well as the blind followers of Hinduism should at least know the scientific and spiritual aspects of Hinduism before they embark on either criticism or vindication of the religion. It is the only religion that first considered every thing living in rhythmic relations with one another and the whole Nature vivacious in the dance of life; therefore, there were no discriminations. It is a pity that inter-caste hatred and exclusiveness as espoused and engendered by the privileged and the dogmatic and followed even by the low castes have damaged the very spirit of the Hindu spiritual universalism and the realized concept of the existence of divinity in all things, as says the Upanishad, “Sarbang khallidang Brahma”, i.e. the absolute being is in all things and everywhere”.

Sailen Debnath’s another book ‘Secularism: Western and Indian’ published by Atlantic publishers is a first-hand book of a serious and sincere comparative study of Eastern and Western concepts of  secularism apart from an arduous attempt to define what secularism is, after all, in the beginning of the book. In this book, he has pointed out that while more Christians are becoming secular, Islam has been steadily spreading in Europe.In the line of his analysis of the emergence of modern secularism in India, Sailen has portrayed the real picture of the challenge to secular politics in the Indian subcontinent owing to the turning up of the demand for Pakistan posed by the Muslim League; but, with a dispassionate outlook, he has given a balanced evaluation of Muhammad Iqbal,  the real theoretician and political philosopher behind the demand for Pakistan.

Sailen's book ‘West Bengal in Doldrums’ is a sincere attempt at writing impartial history even at a time when the players of that history are still alive. His unbiased outlook is proved between the lines of the book with critical analyses of the Bengal Renaissance and the resurgence of Indian science since the second half of the nineteenth century. The novel chapters of the book are on the refugee crisis, homeless humans (Homeless Millions), dying women in brothels (The Cities of Brothels) and Genocide in the Island Trap. On the Naxalite Movement his analysis seems to be very much authentic; and the causes he has pointed out for the decline and fall of the Naxalite Movement are based on meticulous research; the same is the case regarding his view of the Kamatapur and the Gorkhaland Movement. His other books namely Essays On Cultural History of North Bengal , The Dooars in Historical Transition , and his edited book Social and Political Tensions in North Bengal Since 1947 are hitherto the most reliable books on the cultural and political history of North Bengal. On biographical-philosophical writings, his books, 'Philosophical and Political Thought of Sabhas Chandra Bose' and 'A Compendium of Gandhism and Netaji's Critique of Gandhism' are really reflective of a critical analysis of the philosophical thought of two great personalities of modern India.

Philosophy of History
Sailen’s  historiography is grounded on his own philosophy of history. He is not a materialist; he does not see nature without a spirit behind and within; he does not mean history without purpose; therefore, in spite of agreeing to the formation of categories of classes and the existence of class-struggle of some sort, he does not subscribe to Marx’s economic and materialistic determinism in history. According to him, “history is the progressive expression of the evolution of human consciousness in action and creativity”; and for that reason, the role of creative ideas in all fields of discovery, invention, manufacturing, communication, religion, culture, art, music and literature have been crucial and rudimental in the building of human civilization, and hence in the studies of history. In the context of his ideas, it appears that to him history is creative and progressive; i.e. in the long course of historical development and evolution, new things in the forms of inventions and new bunches of knowledge in the sequence  of discoveries are coming into existence; and thus civilization is advancing; and as human civilization is advancing  ethically as well, humanity is becoming more united, coherent and universally conscious as to joint responsibility of humankind in saving the world from scourges of destruction. To him, history is never repeated because the space is ever-changing and the forward-moving time can never be brought back. Thus no incident of the past is repeated in the context of its previous time and space.

In Indian history, Sailen is of the view that the Buddhist period accounting nearly for one thousand years since the sixth century B.C. should be given more importance and emphasis in the studies of Indian history than it is generally given by Indian historians. From a dominant cultural point of view, the majority of historians in India have depicted the Gupta Period as the golden age of Indian history. Sailen holds the opinion that in Sanskrit literature, astronomy, medicine, surgery and metallurgy, the Gupta period marked a distinction for itself; but in view of overall improvement in all fields explicitly human resource development on welfare activities by the state, people’s happiness, irrigation for better agricultural produce, social amity and unity, balance of development in different areas of the country, human progress irrespective of caste and creed, liberating India from foreign yoke of the Greeks, and, above all, cordial external relations with the neighbouring countries and the dissemination of Indian culture to foreign countries, the achievement of the Mauryan period particularly under Chahndragupta Maurya, a Jain, and Asok, a Buddhist, was not only unprecedented but also unexcelled in subsequent ages of Indian history; therefore, it seems that  if any period of Indian history has to be named as the golden period, then certainly the Mauryan period may be more credited as such than  the Gupta period.

His view is that the interpretation of Indian history can not be made on Marxist analytical dimension without proper reference to the Hindu caste system of which Marx had no lucid idea; as a matter of fact, during the long course of Indian history, economic class formations were mostly determined by caste divisions and inter-caste discriminations. Consideration of time and space is essential in the sight of Sailen’s philosophy of history. In order to purport this point, he writes in ‘West Bengal in Doldrums’, “No need of looking at West Bengal through the eyes of a Modernist, Orinetalist, Postmodernist, Post-Colonialist, Structuralist or Deconstructionist to know the facts of life, society, economy, culture and polity and things as they were and as they have changed; and dislocations and fractures as have taken place, the tears that have evaporated and the new formations as they have emerged in West Bengal in the years since the birth of the state in 1947 on a bifurcation of what was known as Bengal; the best is the way of avoiding partisan outlook and so-called ideological standpoint and write of them as they have been untinged of any interpretative colour. The socio-cultural, psychological and politico-economic contexts of Bakhtin’s Russia and Derrida’s or Foucault’s France have been conspicuous by their absence in West Bengal and India as well; therefore, the study of West Bengal through the eyes of someone in Euro-American background in the second half of the twentieth century would well-nigh be irrelevant.”