'Suryavamshi' Review: Deb Brings Alive Tales Of Valour That Captivated The Nineteenth-Century Nationalist Mind

Suryavamshi: The Sun Kings of Rajasthan. Abanindranath Tagore (Author), Sandipan Deb (Translator). Juggernaut Books. 2024. Pages 264. Price Rs 450.

The nineteenth-century nationalist Bengali mind was consumed with seeking ideals and ideas of valour, which it sought inspiration from in its anti-colonial struggle. This is why the heroic persona of Shivaji enthralled them. Inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s revival of Shivaji and his tale as a mass movement and a celebration of Maratha gallantry, Rabindranath Tagore wrote Shibaji Utsob, or The Festival of Shivaji, a poem dedicated to the Maratha warrior-king.

Tagore’s nephew, Abanindranath, is best known as the artist who painted the iconic Bharat Mata. But like many in the Tagore household, Abanindranath had multiple artistic skills. He was a gifted writer and especially focused on what would now be called ‘young adults’. One of Abanindranath’s much-loved books is Raj Kahini, or the stories of the royals, which retells, in the Bengali language, some of the most epic and adventurous stories of the Rajput chieftains and kings of Rajasthan, renowned for their bravery and their indomitable spirit. 

With high-quality access, education, and training in the English language and in research, Abanindranath plucked out the choicest tales from The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan by the East India Company soldier Lieutenant Colonel James Todd, who, in the seventeenth century, produced this exhaustive account of the tales of Rajputana.

As Sandipan Deb tells us in the introduction to his delightful Suryavamshi: The Sun Kings of Rajasthan, an English translation of Abanindranath Tagore’s Raj Kahini, the collection contains some of the most exciting and intriguing stories. The reference to 'sun kings', of course, comes from the fact that many Rajput kings and dynasties claimed their ancestry to the Sun God, Suryadev. This, no doubt, both gave them a sense of divine right to rule and a mythical quality. 

Deb knows and loves this material, and it shows. His translation is fluid and true and captures the yearning spirit of Abanindranath’s telling. Some of the names in this set of nine short stories, all of them interlinked through history and lore, would be more familiar to readers: Padmini, Rana Kumbha, and Sangramsingh. Others, like Hambir, Shiladitya, or Goha, less so. But their stories and folklore, full of bravery, bloodshed, and magical realism, are important for us, especially students, to know and learn. They resonate with the heartbeat of a sense of love for the land and attachment to the people who nourish it, which are the founding blocks of any idea of nationhood. 

One of the most powerful descriptions in the book is of 12,000 Rajput women led by Rani Padmini entering the flames of jauhar rather than letting a single hair be touched by the forces of Allauddin Khilji. “O Agni, O sacred radiant one, come! You defender of our honour, rescuer of us from all our woes, you, the flame divine, you are the final redeemer of our lives who will liberate us from all shackles and attachments,” sang Padmini as she entered the flames. 

From Shiladitya, who had the boon of the use of the chariot of the sun god himself, to the battles of Prithviraj and Surajmull, to the fractious ties between the Rajput kings and Bhil tribal chieftains in the mountains and forests, Suryavamshi is a joyride packed with the kind of rousing storytelling and daredevilry that, sadly, most Indian children do not grow up learning about. 

Deb is a veteran journalist and editor, and he deftly crafts each tale to flow into the other and construct for the reader a canvas streaked with as much blood as it is with vermillion. It is a land where swords are sacred, and when all is lost, 10,000 warriors who worship only Eklingaji, the form of Shiva revered by the Rajputs, and wear tiger skins and carry axes, rise to fight a final battle, putting the fear of god in a force 10 times their size. 

You can smell the dust of the desert, the heady fragrance of the wilderness, and taste the perspiration from warhorses as they rush into battle in this book. Deb has made a seminal contribution by bringing alive these stories for audiences who do not read Bengali and are not from Rajasthan. Indians are adept at forgetting their own tales of heroism; therefore, the importance of the revival of such books cannot be overestimated at a time when India hopes to re-establish its grand narrative for great power status. It is only when we ride with the maharanas in the pages of this book that we realise what it means to fight for what belongs to us.