The Romantic Nationalist: Aesthetics of Viraha in the Poetry of Ambikagiri Raichoudhury

The early decades of the twentieth century signified a dual engagement within many Indian poets with the romantic-modernist influence acquired from the West on the one hand, and the patriotic and nationalist sentiments of the anti-colonial freedom struggle on the other. This paper will look into the poetry of Ambikagiri Raichoudhury, published in various collections like Tumi (1915), Beena (1916), Anubhuti (1954) and Bedonar Ulka (1964), in which he skilfully conflates his desire for freedom and liberty with an intimate appreciation of both sambhoga and viyoga as affective principles, enabling him to cultivate an in-depth and integrative spiritual-devotional sensibility. The paper aims to critically engage with this integrative impulse evident in selected poems of Raichoudhury, which reflect a modern refashioning of viraha a mystic–spiritual experience manifested in verses addressed to the beloved yet having deeper implications with the many-layered dynamics of identity and patriotism.