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Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt
Michael Madhusdan Dutt (1824--1872), a maverick who changed the scope of Bengali poetry in the nineteenth century, especially with his free-verse epic, 'Meghnadhbadh Kabya', was a genius who never got his due. Throughout his life, Madhusudan was caught in an identity crisis: he wrote in the English language, changed his religion and was a restless traveller, yearning to belong somewhere. After an extended sojourn in London and Paris, with misery and poverty as his constant companions, the poet finally found his metier in his mother tongue. Betrayed By Hope , a play-script based on the letters Michael Madhusudan Dutt wrote to friends, well-wishers and patrons, paints the portrait of an artist as he plunges headlong into crisis after crisis, even as his imagination and creativity soar. Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal pay tribute to his extraordinary life in a story that will lay bare our deep-set contradictions about art and life.
112 pages, Hardcover
Published January 18, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 16, 2021
Chose this book as it spoke about Michael Madhusudan Dutt (MMD) - a Christian convert and a great literary figure in the Bengali literature of the 19t century. I love to read Christian authors and about Christian authors and the works on Christian themes.
I recently read a Tamil biography on MMD - வங்கக்கவி: மைக்கேல் மதுசூதன் தத்தா. This play on MMD did not offer anything new. I knew already what is shared in this play. The only difference - Tamil work was a biography and the English work is a play.
Even as a play, it did not engage me much. I personally think this could have been written as a prose narration. As a play, the main characters are just two - The Sutradhar and MMD. And MMD mostly reads out from either his letters (some long ones) or from his literary works. The Sutradhar makes appropriate comments and commentaries filling in the historical and critical details.
I am not sure it would have engaged an audience. I am happy that many of the letters of MMD and some of the translations of MMD's Bengali literary achievements are used in this play. That is the only gain for me.
I recently read a Tamil biography on MMD - வங்கக்கவி: மைக்கேல் மதுசூதன் தத்தா. This play on MMD did not offer anything new. I knew already what is shared in this play. The only difference - Tamil work was a biography and the English work is a play.
Even as a play, it did not engage me much. I personally think this could have been written as a prose narration. As a play, the main characters are just two - The Sutradhar and MMD. And MMD mostly reads out from either his letters (some long ones) or from his literary works. The Sutradhar makes appropriate comments and commentaries filling in the historical and critical details.
I am not sure it would have engaged an audience. I am happy that many of the letters of MMD and some of the translations of MMD's Bengali literary achievements are used in this play. That is the only gain for me.
September 10, 2021
Some very interesting perspectives on the character of Michael Madhusudan Datta, but on the whole, I thought the writing and content and had little to commend for itself - a writing with an excellent idea let down by relatively lacklustre execution.
December 27, 2020
It’s been a long time since I read a play with such a sense of engagement and discovery. So first of all, hearty congratulations to the authors Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal—for choosing the maverick literary figure of Michael Madhusudan Dutt as the subject of their book and choosing the genre of drama to bring him to vivid, throbbing life, complete with his tortured genius and numerous foibles and warts.
Betrayed by Hope is a poignant title, indeed. Taken from the seminal Bengali poet’s work “Atma Bilap”, it aptly conveys the idea of an existence spent chasing the bubble of literary fame and fortune, the way many of us do, but not perhaps with Dutt’s intensity. A pivotal innovator, he is still better known to students of literature rather than the average reader. For how many of us are aware of his immense contribution to the development of Indian literature and that he was lauded by stalwarts like Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and Tagore?
This is what gives this book immense significance, because by recreating the somewhat obscure life of a visionary poet, it provides essential insights into the complex process of literary creation.
All this occurred via a roundabout route, with the poet’s beginning as an impassioned Anglophile. The coming of the East India Company interfered with the idea of an Indian identity to the extent that we are still debating the issue, and young Dutt was one of the earliest targets. This aspect is skillfully handled by the authors with the introduction of a sutradhar, Rubina Rehman, a senior level student in Dhaka, Bangladesh with a research assignment to write on Michael Madhusudan Dutt. The Anglophone Rubina, who confesses that “her Bangla is rather rusty” seems the ideal character to comment upon Dutt’s conflicted persona and the sub-continent’s hybrid culture. As a researcher, she is eager to uncover the writer’s hidden self, and as the play progresses, she explores his writing—as the scene shifts from his birthplace Sagardari, located in contemporary Bangladesh, to Dhaka, nineteenth century Calcutta, Madras, even London and Paris. She also represents the contemporary voice as she veers between admiration for his work and outrage at his personal life. And thus, the issue of choosing to appreciate a writer for his literary accomplishments or hate him for being a revolting human being is also discussed.
We come face to face with MMD as Rubina prefers to call him, through his letters, poetry, Rubina’s narration and the appearance of the various personalities who entered and influenced the extraordinary trajectory of his life. When he appears, declaiming the work of his favourite English poets, sighing for “Albion’s distant shore” we begin to grasp the psyche of the man and his times. When we give ear to the impassioned prose of his letters to his best friend Gourdas Bashak and others, we get an intimate glimpse of the heightened plane of emotion in which he existed.
Thus, we enter the tortuous labyrinth of Dutt’s journey towards achieving the distinction of one of the greatest innovators in Bengali literature. From his impulsive conversion to Christianity to escape an arranged marriage, alienation from his family, and his relocation to Madras to take up a job at the Orphan Asylum. Then his marriage to the blue-eyed Rebecca of Anglo-Indian parentage, whom he abandons to take up with Henrietta, another lady of European extraction. Constantly plagued by financial problems, which were partly the result of his impractical nature, he keeps striving “to come out like a tremendous comet on the literary scene”. Eventually, disillusioned by the land and language of his dreams, the prodigal returns home to embrace his mother tongue, infuse fresh life into Bengali theatre with his plays, gain recognition with heroic poems like Meghnad Kabya and finally be hailed as a genius.
Traversing time, space and identity, this unique book sketches the portrait of a brilliant, though divided mind, of a polyglot who mastered several Indian and foreign languages and eventually used his knowledge of world literature to enrich that of his own country. Do read it to discover a trailblazing writer, navigate the inner spaces of the creative psyche and better understand the development of your country’s
Betrayed by Hope is a poignant title, indeed. Taken from the seminal Bengali poet’s work “Atma Bilap”, it aptly conveys the idea of an existence spent chasing the bubble of literary fame and fortune, the way many of us do, but not perhaps with Dutt’s intensity. A pivotal innovator, he is still better known to students of literature rather than the average reader. For how many of us are aware of his immense contribution to the development of Indian literature and that he was lauded by stalwarts like Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and Tagore?
This is what gives this book immense significance, because by recreating the somewhat obscure life of a visionary poet, it provides essential insights into the complex process of literary creation.
All this occurred via a roundabout route, with the poet’s beginning as an impassioned Anglophile. The coming of the East India Company interfered with the idea of an Indian identity to the extent that we are still debating the issue, and young Dutt was one of the earliest targets. This aspect is skillfully handled by the authors with the introduction of a sutradhar, Rubina Rehman, a senior level student in Dhaka, Bangladesh with a research assignment to write on Michael Madhusudan Dutt. The Anglophone Rubina, who confesses that “her Bangla is rather rusty” seems the ideal character to comment upon Dutt’s conflicted persona and the sub-continent’s hybrid culture. As a researcher, she is eager to uncover the writer’s hidden self, and as the play progresses, she explores his writing—as the scene shifts from his birthplace Sagardari, located in contemporary Bangladesh, to Dhaka, nineteenth century Calcutta, Madras, even London and Paris. She also represents the contemporary voice as she veers between admiration for his work and outrage at his personal life. And thus, the issue of choosing to appreciate a writer for his literary accomplishments or hate him for being a revolting human being is also discussed.
We come face to face with MMD as Rubina prefers to call him, through his letters, poetry, Rubina’s narration and the appearance of the various personalities who entered and influenced the extraordinary trajectory of his life. When he appears, declaiming the work of his favourite English poets, sighing for “Albion’s distant shore” we begin to grasp the psyche of the man and his times. When we give ear to the impassioned prose of his letters to his best friend Gourdas Bashak and others, we get an intimate glimpse of the heightened plane of emotion in which he existed.
Thus, we enter the tortuous labyrinth of Dutt’s journey towards achieving the distinction of one of the greatest innovators in Bengali literature. From his impulsive conversion to Christianity to escape an arranged marriage, alienation from his family, and his relocation to Madras to take up a job at the Orphan Asylum. Then his marriage to the blue-eyed Rebecca of Anglo-Indian parentage, whom he abandons to take up with Henrietta, another lady of European extraction. Constantly plagued by financial problems, which were partly the result of his impractical nature, he keeps striving “to come out like a tremendous comet on the literary scene”. Eventually, disillusioned by the land and language of his dreams, the prodigal returns home to embrace his mother tongue, infuse fresh life into Bengali theatre with his plays, gain recognition with heroic poems like Meghnad Kabya and finally be hailed as a genius.
Traversing time, space and identity, this unique book sketches the portrait of a brilliant, though divided mind, of a polyglot who mastered several Indian and foreign languages and eventually used his knowledge of world literature to enrich that of his own country. Do read it to discover a trailblazing writer, navigate the inner spaces of the creative psyche and better understand the development of your country’s
November 24, 2025
Betrayed by Hope by Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal is a deceptively simple five-act play built around three primary characters: Michael Madhusudan Dutta, his childhood friend Gourdas Basak, and Rubina Rehman—the imagined Sutradhar, a PhD scholar from Dhaka created by the authors. The play draws extensively on Dutt’s personal letters to friends and contemporaries such as Basak, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Rajnarayan Basu, Keshab Chandra Ganguli, and Jatindramohan Tagore, weaving them into a dramatic exploration of the poet’s inner world.
Michael Madhusudan Dutta emerges as a man of mercurial temperament and a restless, often self-destructive mind, whose contradictions shaped a life marked by brilliance as well as near-perpetual financial distress. Educated at the prestigious Hindu College, he absorbed Western ideas and Romantic poetry at a young age and took a rebellious stance against the religio-cultural orthodoxy of nineteenth-century Hindu society. Convinced that Christianity held the key to India’s future, he rejected much of his own cultural inheritance. His impulsive conversion to Christianity—motivated partly by a desire to evade an arranged marriage—proved the first in a series of decisions that plunged him into years of hardship. His yearning for England and the “Albion’s distant shore,” as expressed in his poetry, embodied both his ambition and his naïveté.
Middle age, however, transformed him. Experiences of racism in England, marginalisation by the British literary establishment in India, the brutal revelations of the 1857 War of Independence, and criticism by John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune forced him into self-reflection. The once-ardent Anglophile rediscovered the beauty and expressive power of his mother tongue. In a letter to Basak, he even declared that no man could be truly “educated” without mastery of his native language, regardless of European schooling. This reversal breathed new life into his literary career. Sermista established him as a formidable Bengali playwright, but it was Meghnadbadh Kavya—his audacious retelling of the Ramayana that casts Meghnad as hero and Lakshman as villain—that secured his place in the canon. Only a true iconoclast could have so dramatically overturned a foundational epic.
Yet as a person, Dutta often appears self-absorbed, escapist, and financially irresponsible. His abandonment of his wife and four children in Madras after his father’s death—an act he would repeat in different forms—reflects a habitual pattern. Many of his later struggles were less the result of circumstance and more consequences of his own decisions. Even at the height of his literary fame, he left Calcutta to pursue legal studies in England despite no clear professional benefit.
Within the play, the historical Dutta and Basak are vividly brought to life, but the fictional Rubina Rehman adds the most intriguing dimension. As Sutradhar, she provides a contemporary, critical lens on Dutta’s achievements and failings. A student of English literature, Rubina admires the feminist contours of works like Sermista, Padmabati, and Krishna Kumari, yet she is equally appalled by Dutta’s moral failures—especially his repeated desertion of family. At one point she even contemplates abandoning him as the subject of her thesis. Through her conflicted perspective, the audience is invited to grapple with the interplay of Dutta the poet and Dutta the man.
Ultimately, Betrayed by Hope captures the paradoxes of a literary titan whose innovations—introducing blank verse and Shakespearean sonnets into Bengali and, by extension, Indian literature—cannot be disentangled from his turbulent life. Dutta remains a figure both admirable and exasperating, a maverick whose brilliance and flaws are inseparable.
Michael Madhusudan Dutta emerges as a man of mercurial temperament and a restless, often self-destructive mind, whose contradictions shaped a life marked by brilliance as well as near-perpetual financial distress. Educated at the prestigious Hindu College, he absorbed Western ideas and Romantic poetry at a young age and took a rebellious stance against the religio-cultural orthodoxy of nineteenth-century Hindu society. Convinced that Christianity held the key to India’s future, he rejected much of his own cultural inheritance. His impulsive conversion to Christianity—motivated partly by a desire to evade an arranged marriage—proved the first in a series of decisions that plunged him into years of hardship. His yearning for England and the “Albion’s distant shore,” as expressed in his poetry, embodied both his ambition and his naïveté.
Middle age, however, transformed him. Experiences of racism in England, marginalisation by the British literary establishment in India, the brutal revelations of the 1857 War of Independence, and criticism by John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune forced him into self-reflection. The once-ardent Anglophile rediscovered the beauty and expressive power of his mother tongue. In a letter to Basak, he even declared that no man could be truly “educated” without mastery of his native language, regardless of European schooling. This reversal breathed new life into his literary career. Sermista established him as a formidable Bengali playwright, but it was Meghnadbadh Kavya—his audacious retelling of the Ramayana that casts Meghnad as hero and Lakshman as villain—that secured his place in the canon. Only a true iconoclast could have so dramatically overturned a foundational epic.
Yet as a person, Dutta often appears self-absorbed, escapist, and financially irresponsible. His abandonment of his wife and four children in Madras after his father’s death—an act he would repeat in different forms—reflects a habitual pattern. Many of his later struggles were less the result of circumstance and more consequences of his own decisions. Even at the height of his literary fame, he left Calcutta to pursue legal studies in England despite no clear professional benefit.
Within the play, the historical Dutta and Basak are vividly brought to life, but the fictional Rubina Rehman adds the most intriguing dimension. As Sutradhar, she provides a contemporary, critical lens on Dutta’s achievements and failings. A student of English literature, Rubina admires the feminist contours of works like Sermista, Padmabati, and Krishna Kumari, yet she is equally appalled by Dutta’s moral failures—especially his repeated desertion of family. At one point she even contemplates abandoning him as the subject of her thesis. Through her conflicted perspective, the audience is invited to grapple with the interplay of Dutta the poet and Dutta the man.
Ultimately, Betrayed by Hope captures the paradoxes of a literary titan whose innovations—introducing blank verse and Shakespearean sonnets into Bengali and, by extension, Indian literature—cannot be disentangled from his turbulent life. Dutta remains a figure both admirable and exasperating, a maverick whose brilliance and flaws are inseparable.
December 24, 2020
I think the one thing that keeps us going even when we feel all is lost is 'hope'. It's the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel and for many it's something that makes everyday life better. But have you ever thought what happens if someone loses even that last thread of hope? How would someone live? The very title of this book 'Betrayed By Hope' suggests something like that and reading through this book just felt like it.
#japreviews20
'Betrayed By Hope' by Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal. It's a play based on the life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt (MMD) who never got his due. He was a free spirited genius who quite literally changed the game for Bangla poetry. This was a man who never truly understood or found out where he belongs. It seems like he is living in a state of perpetual identity crisis.
He was born and brought up in Kolkata but left the city for his reasons, changed his religion which earned him estrangement from his father, wrote in English (in the 19th century), was a restless traveler, always in search of something, lived in London and Paris where he was miserable and in debt and finally found solace in his mother tongue. That's pretty much his life but the book is not just about that. It's about more.
This book seems like a comment on the writer's life. It gives you insights into his life and presents facts as it is but it was visible how much effort and research would have gone to write something like this. Not for once does the book seem like an image clearing effort but only brings out how human MMD was and a flawed one at that.
This was an unusual book. It's not like anything I have read in the past. It was a different experience and an interesting one indeed.
#japreviews20
'Betrayed By Hope' by Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal. It's a play based on the life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt (MMD) who never got his due. He was a free spirited genius who quite literally changed the game for Bangla poetry. This was a man who never truly understood or found out where he belongs. It seems like he is living in a state of perpetual identity crisis.
He was born and brought up in Kolkata but left the city for his reasons, changed his religion which earned him estrangement from his father, wrote in English (in the 19th century), was a restless traveler, always in search of something, lived in London and Paris where he was miserable and in debt and finally found solace in his mother tongue. That's pretty much his life but the book is not just about that. It's about more.
This book seems like a comment on the writer's life. It gives you insights into his life and presents facts as it is but it was visible how much effort and research would have gone to write something like this. Not for once does the book seem like an image clearing effort but only brings out how human MMD was and a flawed one at that.
This was an unusual book. It's not like anything I have read in the past. It was a different experience and an interesting one indeed.
December 31, 2020
It is an recount into the literary work of Michael Madhusudan Dutt . Betrayed by Hope pushes the expectations of a play to create a breath-taking literary form. A little of history, life & work makes it an interesting one.
It is passionate, intriguing and produces a wonderful insights into the literary works of MMD, who has been one of the pillar of the Bangla poetry till date. The play also gives us the unforgettable scenes about his personal life. It captivates us into reading the times of where the highlights of real life stories convene a magic of truth and reality.
I was skeptical if this read would work for me or not. It is definitely my cup of tea. I rate it 4.
.
It is passionate, intriguing and produces a wonderful insights into the literary works of MMD, who has been one of the pillar of the Bangla poetry till date. The play also gives us the unforgettable scenes about his personal life. It captivates us into reading the times of where the highlights of real life stories convene a magic of truth and reality.
I was skeptical if this read would work for me or not. It is definitely my cup of tea. I rate it 4.
.
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