Nil Darpan; or, The Indigo Planting Mirror

About

Dinabandhu Mitra's 1858-59 Bengali play was one of the most politically explosive works of nineteenth-century India: a searing indictment of the indigo plantation system, in which British planters forced Bengali farmers to grow indigo at subsistence wages under threat of violence. The play caused a sensation; its English translation by Michael Madhusudan Dutt brought it to British attention and contributed to the indigo revolt of 1859-60. The Nil Darpan Affair — arising from a missionary's publication of the translation — became a cause célèbre in British political debate about colonial governance. It is the founding work of Bengali political theater and one of the earliest anti-colonial plays in world literature.