Rabindranath's account seems to reflect the tensions present in the Brahmo Samaj during that time.

Since the name of Keshab Babu ( Keshab Chandra Sen) is mentioned, it would appear that it is set in the time before that movement split in the 1860's. It is also quite clear from the historical references that the events described are taking place in a Bengal of a few decades earlier, when the Brahmo Samaj was a greater force in Bengali society than it was by the turn of the 20th century. Indeed there is enough earnestness in this work to make me wonder if it was not written by a much younger man than the 50-year-old Tagore was in 1910. Perhaps more Dickensian social overtones would have been welcome, and where Rabindranath uses irony, it seems insufficient. The overall flavor seems to have been touched by the feminine social and romantic mood of Jane Austen or the Brontes, or even Louisa May Alcott. translation, done in 1924 by W.W.Pearson, is in the literary English of the period and keeps the spirit of the original quite well. I started reading it 20 years ago in Bengali but never finished it. Written in 1910, this novel is sometimes said to be Rabindranath's masterpiece. He also wrote the national anthem of India, Jana Gana Mana, and of Bangladesh, Amar Shonar Bangla.Somehow or another I found myself reading Gora, which I found in the Gurukula library. Known for works such as Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World,) his novels, short stories and verse are considered part of the greatest of world literature, famous for their exploration of the political and the personal. He modernised Bengali literature, moving it away from its rigid classical form and strict linguistic structure. One of India’s most cherished figures, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1914) was a novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist, painter, educationist and thinker, the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. The novel is believed to be an expression of Tagore’s own transition from Hindu revivalism to universal brotherhood, from nationalism to internationalism, from the acceptance of rigid Brahmanism and Hinduism to the religion of man. Canvassing the social, cultural, religious and political life of nineteenth century urban middle-class Bengali, it is a landmark in the history of the Bengali novel. Gora (1910) is Tagore’s fifth novel and is considered his masterpiece.

Gora bengali novel