Table Of ContentWHAT HAPPENED TO
THE
BHADRALOK
What Happened to
the
Bhadralok
PARIMAL GHOSH
PRIMUS BOOKS
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CHENNAI LUCKNOW AGRA AHMEDABAD BENGALURU COIMBATORE
DEHRADUN GUWAHATI HYDERABAD JAIPUR JALANDHAR KANPUR
KOCHI KOLKATA MADURAI MUMBAI PATNA RANCHI VARANASI
©
Parimal Ghosh 2016
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First published 2016
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To
Gautam Bhadra
The world of the epic is the national heroic past: it is a world of ‘beginnings’
and ‘peak times’ in the national history, a world of fathers and of founders of
families, a world of ‘�rsts’ and ‘bests’.
— . , ‘Epic and Novel’.
M.M BAKHTIN
Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Critique of the and the Critic
Bhadralok Bhadralok
3. Calcutta’s Bengali Theatre: An Account of the and the
Real
Iconic
4. Was There a Muslim : A Reading of Selected Texts
Bhadralok
5. A Passage of Football
6. From Byomkesh to Feluda: The Strange Life of the Bengali
Detective
7. My Grandfather’s House and Some Thoughts on Kolkata’s
Para
8. Where have all the Gone?
Bhadraloks
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
T
to take shape many years ago in the course of long
HIS BOOK BEGAN
with my late friend Dhruva Gupta. He used to teach history of
addas
Africa in University of Calcutta, but he was better known among
friends for his knowledge of cinema, Bengali theatre and . It
Rabindrasangeet
was through these chatting sessions that I realized that Dhruvada was
privileged to have been associated with a circle of cultural activists—singers,
theatre workers, �lm directors, and littérateurs—who from the 1940s to the
1960s, had exercised enormous in�uence in Calcutta’s world of culture, and
through that in the political landscape. I could also see that in the 1970s, this
in�uence had begun to wane. This was not so much because of any
fundamental public disillusionment with the art of these activists. Indeed,
most of them remained iconic �gures throughout their lives in their chosen
�elds. What changed, imperceptibly, and yet unstoppably, was the tonality of
the audience. The political importance that artists and writers used to carry
in the 1940s, through to the 1960s, as conscience keepers of the society, and
that irrespective of their personal political inclination, slowly began to
shrink. By the 1980s, most of them would begin to realize that they had
been rendered into harmless stars on a distant �rmament. This book is about
the arrival of this new audience, the new , as I call them. It is to a
bhadralok
very large extent a result of our and I only hope Dhruva Gupta would
adda
have been satis�ed with it.
Through Dhruvada I gained access to the magni�cent archive of the
Natya Shodh Sansthan, then located on Lee Road, Calcutta. I am grateful to
Pratibha Agarwal and her extremely diligent and helpful staff for their
assistance in those early days of my research. I also remember with gratitude
the help I received from Asim Mukherjee and his merry men in the
National Library, Kolkata, but for whose ready support, this work would
have been rendered many times more difficult. I have also from time to time
used the library of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and I
take this opportunity to acknowledge the ungrudging assistance of both the
faculty and the staff.
Special thanks are due to Kevin Greenbank, Archivist, Centre of South
Asian Studies, University of Cambridge and the staff of the Cambridge
University Library, for their much needed help.
I have received helpful comments from friends who very kindly read
different sections of the manuscript. My sincere thanks are due to Ranabir
Samaddar, Keya and Subhendu Dasgupta, Manas Ray, Anuradha Roy,
Madhumati Dutta, Sanjeeb Mukherjee and Samita Sen. Shrimoy Roy
Chaudhury offered incisive comments on my thoughts on the Bengali
�ctional detective. Tapan Sinha, a cardiologist by profession, has been
another enthusiastic friend who offered his support. Sheena Panja patiently
went through the whole manuscript, her observations, as usual, helped me in
tightening up some of my arguments. I gratefully remember Rory O’Brien
of Cambridge who �rst suggested that I should use Bakhtin to frame my
argument. My students Rajat Kanti Sur and Debdatta Chowdhury were
patient listeners to my ponti�cations whenever I needed them. Parts of this
book were presented in seminars and conferences at Rabindra Bharati
University, Jadavpur University, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge,
and at the 2008 European Conference of South Asian Studies, held at
University of Manchester, UK. I am thankful to those who offered their
comments and suggestions. They have all contributed and made my task
easier, and I wish I could hold all of them responsible for the �nal shape this
book has taken.
I have always received encouragement and much needed space from my
colleagues at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies,
University of Calcutta, from where I retired in November 2014. Above all, I
owe a deep debt of gratitude to Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, at one time,
Research Associate at the Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies. She
has been a friend and a collaborator whose intellectual and archival inputs
were vital for this project. I am also grateful to Paula Banerjee for having
persuaded Pradip Kumar Banerjee, the renowned footballer of yesteryears
and an extremely capable coach, to sit for a long interview, which provided
me with valuable insights into the world of football in Calcutta. I thank
Pradipda for his patience in answering my often quite uninformed questions.
