New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2012. 280 p.*

Among the vast array of studies of Indian modernization, a special place is occupied by the analysis of socio-cultural processes that took place in the XIX - early XX centuries in Bengal - an advanced province of British India, a kind of meeting point between traditional society and the West. Terminologically, the whole complex of these processes was referred to as the" Bengali Renaissance", which in itself caused discussions between opponents and supporters of the use of this term in describing the spiritual, intellectual, social, political and cultural movement of the elite of Calcutta and other Bengali cities. Both of them, when justifying their positions, often demonstrate an obvious tendency to attach an ontological status to this term, while it has an epistemological meaning (even if we take into account the fact that Bengali intellectuals themselves recognize their era as a "renaissance"). The term " Bengali Renaissance "hides" systems of symbolic description " (P. A. Florensky), each of which represents and interprets the epoch in its own way, depending on the author's methodological positions.

Most of the studies of the Bengali Renaissance in the XX century are studies of religious, social-reform, political-legal, educational and cultural practices; books and articles about the activities of luminaries of the era in the historical context clearly prevailed over works devoted to the history of thought. This is not to say that this was due to a lack of methodological approaches to the analysis of the epoch, but rather to the desire to continue the established traditions of studying it in proven paradigms of thinking.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Professor Shubroto Dasgupta, an Indian scholar, specialist in the field of philosophy of science, director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana (Lafayette, USA), made an attempt to study the Bengali Renaissance on fundamentally different methodological grounds, thanks to which the epoch appears as a history of thought, as a creative period in the history of culture. Already in the Introduction, he distances himself from previous approaches and declares that his positions differ: "I came to this topic as a cognitive scientist whose field is the life and life history of the creative mind. I hope to shed new light on the subject of the Bengali Renaissance by taking a cognitive perspective - a perspective that, as far as I know, has never been used in the extensive writings on the Bengali Renaissance" (p. 2). The content (and structure) of the book, as well as the positive responses to his work in academia and, in fact, in general, in the context of The third edition of the book shows that the use of cognitive perspective as an approach has led to a fundamentally new deductive knowledge about the epoch.

Shubroto Dasgupta explores the Bengali Renaissance through uncovering the cognitive nature of the creative output (products) of a "small but remarkable community of individuals" that unfolded in the fields of history, theology, literature, science, and religion. Based on the idea of collective creativity of Bengali intellectuals who have a certain "collective cognitive identity", the author defines the phenomenon of the Bengali Renaissance as a "genuine cognitive revolution", which is the fundamental foundation of the era (p.2), and analyzes it in the book, building his own research methodology. Although the Introduction emphasizes that cognitive science empirically examines "intentional consciousness", judging by the structure and content of the book, the reader is presented with a philosophical study that begins with an explication of the deductive model and is further developed as a study of the consciousness of the luminaries of the era along given vectors, observing the principle of historicism in the presentation, a study that demonstrates the productivity of the model. This structure-from methodology to obtaining inferred knowledge-characterizes the best scientific works in any field.

* Dasgupta Shubroto. Bengali Renaissance: Identity and Creativity from Rammohan Rai to Rabindranath Tagore. New Dsli: Permanent Black, 2012. 280 p.

It also serves as a kind of educational and methodological guide for young scientists, which demonstrates how scientific thought works.

In the chapter "Cognitive Identity and Creative Mentality in Colonial Bengal", S. Dasgupta presents approaches and models for analyzing the cognitive revolution through the original "creative person model". He begins by identifying two related but distinct cognitive features of the creative mentality of the era: cross - cultural mentality, which is the ability to think, comprehend and create, combining two unrelated traditions (Indian and Western), and universalism as a belief and perception of fundamental unity in diversity and differences. The creative mentality of the described content appears in a specific historical period-only with the arrival of the British in India and characterizes the consciousness of a selected group. For the first time, these cognitive features are shown in the ideas and works of the "father of modern India" Rammohan Rai (1772-1833). This metaphor of the "father", according to Sh. Dasgupta's theory is also adequate for his proposed model: "Paradise started the cognitive revolution in colonial India" (p. 5).

The cognitive revolution, as defined by the author of the book, is "a radical transformation in the way of thinking, perception, argumentation and conceptualization, including the transformation of cognitive identity, which, spreading to groups, society, and culture, leads to qualitative changes in people's consciousness" (p. 5-6). In this regard, Sh. Dasgupta finds himself opposed to historians who argue for the" non-revolutionary nature " of the Bengali Renaissance in its impact on Indian society, politics, economy, and culture. The author argues that the cognitive revolution should not entail socio-economic and political transformations, since it may well be limited to the election of a few-in the intellectual and creative vanguard at a specific historical time (p. 7). Therefore, the entire era of Sh. Dasgupta describes in terms of the cognitive revolution that is taking place in the minds of creative beings - writers, poets, playwrights, scientists, social thinkers and religious reformers, enlighteners, etc.; they have produced the creative mentality of the era as a result. This interpretation resonates with the thoughts of N. A. Berdyaev, who believed that true revolutionism requires a spiritual change in the fundamental principles of life.

For an empirical study of the content of the Sh. Dasgupta constructed a theoretical model of creative personality, described through the structure of cognitive identity. The latter includes three components: 1) the space of faith/knowledge, where three levels are combined-common to the whole society, specific to the vocation/profession of the individual and personal; 2) emotional space and 3) the space of needs/interests that generate goals and the search for specific means to achieve them. Three spaces interact with each other in the cognitive process and generate a set of mental actions, including the creation of schemes or projects that allow one to respond in one way or another to situations and questions of reality (p.8-18). Thanks to this instrumental knowledge, it is possible to study the cognitive style of a creative person - the way of actions that underlie cognitive processes. S. Dasgupta emphasizes the dynamic and transforming nature of cognitive identity, the heterogeneity of changes occurring in the case of each creative person of the era; accordingly, it is necessary to considerhistory of identity - both individual and group, find out its origin, sources, and describe the phenomenon of "shared identity" of the era.

In the following chapters of the book, the author successfully applies the proposed research model. Chapters 2-4 ("Orientalist cognitive Identity and its Overthrow", "Inventing the monotheistic movement" and "Constructing a Cross-cultural Mentality") are devoted to the origins of the cognitive revolution in Bengal, the identity and creativity of Rammohan Rai, who radically transformed the identities of like-minded people and new generations of intellectuals, and the formation of the phenomenon of cross-cultural mentality of Bengali creative intellectuals.

Sh. Dasgupta linked the origin of the cognitive identity of the Bengali Renaissance with another cognitive identity - "orientalist". It shows how the "discovery of India", first of all its creative past (science, literature, culture) by orientalists, who adhered to the universalist rationalistic approach to non-European cultures dictated by the European Enlightenment, took place. The new empirical knowledge gained in the course of their scientific work and the belief in the superior character and quality of other peoples

Indian culture and science from the era of the Vedas to the end of the seventh century AD formed the space of faith/knowledge of Orientalists, the core of which was the concept of the "golden era of Indian history" (p.30). This scheme was motivated by specific needs and goals, ranging from the desire to build the government of India in the most perfect way (and for this to know its culture and history and act "like an Asian") (W. Hastings) to the desire to discover the perfection of Sanskrit and literature on it (W. Hastings). Jones) and prove the ancient origins of Indian mathematics and Vedic monotheism (G. T. Colebrooke).

An alternative to orientalist positive identity was presented by negative cognitive identity, which was demonstrated in the History of British India (1817) by James Mill, a London East India Company official who had never visited the colony. Mill's utilitarian "counter-scheme" is the exact opposite of the "golden age of Indian history": the simple, "unpolished," crude, and "uncultured" past of India described in his book subverted the orientalist identity. These two versions of the identity of European orientalists were not simply accepted by the Indian intelligentsia, and especially the Bengali intelligentsia, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but transformed by it - this, according to the author, was the cognitive revolution in Bengal (p. 37-38).

But then there is the question of the originality of the Bengali Renaissance, its figures and the results of their work, since they have adopted and transformed an orientalist identity. To this question, Sh. Dasgupta responds by analyzing the activities of the founder of the Bengali Renaissance, Rammohan Rai, in the field of "inventing" the monotheistic movement and the religious reform society "Brahmo Samaj" (Chapter 3): "The originality of this society can be judged by recognizing it as a "product of human consciousness", an artifact produced or conceived in the form of some plan/ schemes in response to certain needs, and do the same with all objects created in this era, material or ideal, i.e. consider them "products of mental processes" "(p. 39). "And since originality is closely related to creativity," writes Sh. Dasgupta, " the act of invention is also an act of creativity "(p. 40). At the same time, originality is a judgment about an object made by its producer and / or consumer, and not an "absolute" or "objective" property. Both originality and creativity are subjective signs that are found in the facts and results of creativity not only by contemporaries of events, but also by scientists who study these historical facts. The author's use of the terms "producer", "consumer" and " product "to describe intellectual processes is unusual, as it evokes associations with economic sciences or terms used to describe" consumer society", but they fit perfectly into the theoretical model described in Chapter 1.

Following this model, S. Dasgupta describes the Brahmo Samaj founded by R. Rai and his associates in 1828 as a "material artifact", a community of people who wanted to worship the one God (Brahmo) in a special way, and at the same time as an idea that appeared before the creation of the society and was shared by many, including the spiritual heirs of the reformer, despite subsequent schisms in the organization in the second half of the 19th century. In other words, in cognitive terms, the Brahmo Samaj is "the name of a scheme that represents a whole with fundamental functional features, a community devoted to monotheism and rejecting idolatry" (p. 43). The scientist repeatedly emphasizes that Brahmoism does not replace the "total scheme of Hinduism", does not overthrow Hinduism - this was not the case for R. Rai's purposes; but it presents its original version, a "sub-scheme" (which is evident from the comparison of the "schemes" of Hinduism and Brahmoism, p.46-48). This seems to me a promising response to two opposing evaluative positions regarding the place and role of the Brahmo Samaj and the activities of R. Rai in history-a unilateral condemnation of attempts to bring monotheism in Hinduism to the fore and formalize it with ethical doctrines of charity and service to one's neighbor, or an equally unilateral approval of "the creation of a universal monotheistic church". It is shown that the Brahmoism created by R. Rai is not opposed to the general scheme of Hinduism as a system of religions and is a new variation of it, while maintaining continuity with the Vedas and the Vedantic philosophical tradition.

However, along with originality, creativity has another important point-the ability of the created object to evoke responses in the audience, up to changes in their cognitive identity that take various forms. To describe this phenomenon, Sh. Dasgupta suggests the term "creative encounter", and

consumer experience through the produced object (p. 49-50), which not only explains the impact of Bengali Renaissance artefacts on contemporaries and subsequent generations of Bengali elites, but also takes into account the disagreements and discussions that arise among consumers about the meaning and content of artefacts. On the examples of the humanist scientist Brojendronath Shil, the publicist and public figure Kishorichand Mitro and the religious reformer Keshobchondro Sena Sh. Dasgupta demonstrates the influence of R. R. Tolkien's writings and ideas. Raya influences representatives of new generations of Bengali intellectuals through cognitive identification with him and further development of his ideas.

As a result of the study of cognitive identity and cognitive style of R. Raya Sh. Dasgupta concludes that his writings and the monotheistic movement he initiated are fundamentally independent of British Orientalist identity (p.71). Rammohan's "Cognitive biography" shows that his consciousness was prepared for creativity even during the period when he received traditional Islamic and Sanskrit education: "The cognitive identity that British Orientalists might have stimulated in the Bengali intelligentsia certainly took place in shaping the evolving identity of Paradise, but it did not take place in the 1780s, as far as is known" (p.58). This is also supported by a comparison of the cognitive identities of orientalists and R. R. Tolkien. Raya - they share only a super-need to know the Indian past.

The undoubted success of Sh. Dasgupta began describing a "cross-cultural mentality" in terms of a "creative encounter" - in this case, Indian and Western cultures - in the minds of Bengali intellectuals who act as consumers who are cross-culturally capable of responding Dasgupta states that "the construction of a cross - cultural mentality, which includes Indian and Western cultures, is the most important creative achievement of the Bengali Renaissance" (p. 74), and it is difficult not to think that the development of a cross-cultural mentality, which includes Indian and Western cultures, is the most important creative achievement of the Bengali Renaissance "(p. 74). agree with the author on this. In fact, the entire legacy of the era is the result of such a cross-cultural synthesis, dialogue of various religious traditions (Hindu, Islamic, Christian), educational models, social and political ideas and theories, literary trends and genres, styles of visual and musical art. In what forms and in what spheres did the cross-cultural mentality manifest itself in creative interaction with the West, S. Dasgupta shows using the examples of R. R. Tolkien himself. A group of students of the poet, educator, and Hindu college teacher G. V. L. Derosio and the poet Michael Modhushudon Dotto, who integrated European literary forms into Bengali poetry.

Chapters 5-8 are devoted to the vectors of the cognitive revolution and the spread of shared cognitive identity in the second half of the 19th century - the first third of the 20th century: the formation of the Bengali novel and cultural nation-building, the formation of scientific consciousness, the understanding of Hinduism in the universalist spirit, and the multifaceted activities of R. Tagore in the field of literature and culture. the authors of the Bengali Renaissance as a cognitive revolution, but limited himself to considering "the most significant and interesting figures in terms of the richness, originality and effectiveness of the created" (p. 244) - the writer, creator of the Bengali novel and national anthem "Bande Mataram" Bonkimchondro Chottopadhyay, mathematician Radhanath Shikhdar, physiologist Mohendrolal Shirkar, physicist Jagodishchondro Boshu, chemist Profullochondro Raya, the religious preacher Ramakrishna and his disciple the philosopher Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore. Revealing various aspects of cross-cultural creativity through individuals involved in the process of the cognitive revolution, Sh. Dasgupta not only highlights the features of the cross-cultural mentality of everyone (including resorting to schemes of spaces of faith/knowledge and needs/goals), but also clearly demonstrates the pan-Indian significance for culture and the modernizing traditional society of those processes that occur at the intrapersonal level.

Unfortunately, however, there is almost no place in the book to describe the social and political aspects of the identity and creativity of Bengali intellectuals; perhaps the author deliberately did not focus on them due to the fact that these aspects are adequately represented in the historiography of the Bengali Renaissance. Nevertheless, the attitude to traditional social institutions and generally accepted institutions, legal awareness and ideas about the political situation and prospects of a country in colonial dependence,

They could be productively described in terms of cognitive identity and cross-cultural mentality.

The author could have paid more attention to the internal influences on the cross-cultural mentality of Bengali intellectuals , for example, who are "their own Others" of Islam and Indo-Muslim culture for Hindus, or the less obvious influence of Buddhism on the culture and thought of the era.

As a result of the study, Sh. Dasgupta built a picture of the "four-level structure of the cognitive revolution": 1) the basis is the concrete results of individual creativity (from the Brahmo Samaj and literary works to the discoveries of Indian science and the music of Robindroshongit); 2) the level of more abstract, conceptual and ideational elements of creativity and cognitive style, which are concepts and schemes of various kinds (monotheism the concept of Brahmoism, monistic ethics, comparative position, the need to create, etc.); 3) wholes created in the individual consciousness or encompassing the cognitive identities of many people (nationalist consciousness, scientific consciousness, historical consciousness); 4) the highest level, the most important of all, is cross-cultural mentality and a universalist approach (p. 238 243). As a shared identity, this structure was not just radically new to the old Bengali mentality, but "was handed down to the twentieth century... and spread among the entire Indian intelligentsia" (p. 244-245), thereby creating a modern Indian consciousness. Outstanding bearers of the last Sh. Dasgupta considers C. V. Ramana, R. K. Narayan, and J. R. R. Tolkien to be the most important figures. Nehru, Satyajit Rai, Ravi Shankar and M. K. Gandhi, S. Chandrashekhar and Amartya Sena. But this influence-broadcast can become a topic of special research.

The undoubted advantage of the monograph Sh. I consider Dasgupta's revelation of the universal humanistic character of the era, interpreted as an impulse to cross-culturalism and universality.

On the one hand, the legacy of cross-cultural mentality and identity, according to the author of the book, is a fundamental psychological legacy of the Bengali Renaissance for colonial and post-colonial India of the XX century and beyond (p. 242). Indeed, the achievements of the epoch have entered the psychology of modern creators of culture, science and sociality and are being transmitted to society and the world; as an indologist who studies the history of thought and culture of this era, I constantly notice the presence of its ideas and ideals in the work of modern Indian scientists and artists. "Freedom as development" by Amartya Sen would not have been possible without combining the economic theory of the West with the legacy of the humanistic social thought of R. Tagore and the entire previous era. The theme of accepting and understanding the Other in Amitabh Ghosh's work is inherited from the spiritual quest of his fellow Bengalis. The anthem of freedom, a protest against traditionalism and religious extremism is heard in the novels and essays of Salman Rushdie. Not only in the films of Satyajit Rai (the direct heir to the spirit of the era), Rittvik Ghatak and Govind Nihalani, but also in Bollywood films, there are many reminiscences of the ideas of the Bengali Renaissance. In this sense, the entire modern culture of India inherits the Renaissance processes of the XIX-early XX centuries.

On the other hand, S. Dasgupta brought to the fore universalism, which is present as a belief in the mentality of all Bengali intellectuals who are engaged in the search for the one in diversity, the one God in all religions and universal religion, the unity of religion and science, universal humanism, etc. In recognizing the universal, in finding it in the national, the Bengali intellectuals came out of the socio-cultural isolation of traditional Indian society and turned to understanding the problems of human existence in the world and society in a personological, rather than traditional, sociocentric way.

The justification of the substantial predominance of universalism and humanism in the Bengali Renaissance is an absolute merit of Sh. Dasgupta's approach differs in this respect from a number of studies of this era in the twentieth century, in which the development of cultural and political nationalism since the end of the nineteenth century represented a distancing from the universal humanism of the ideas of R. Rai, the Young Bengalis and the Brahmoists, or a direct transition to the Hindu renaissance.

The methodology and concept of the Bengali Renaissance presented in the book by Sh. Dasgupta is a new and original view of the era, which opens up prospects for studying the history of consciousness and ideas not only in India and its regions, but also in other non-Western countries that are following the path of modernization and development.

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