Why Bengalis Have A Thriving Modern History Of Autobiography Writing

I treat almost everything as lies and false. I have considered my own sincerity as the greatest deception and doubted it the most. If I liked a particular dawn, or if a sunset behind a fort charmed me, I put an arm around my own shoulder, “Really? Or have you learnt it from books?” I asked. “Or, are you feeling good because that’s the norm?”

The quote is from Bengali novelist Sandipan Chattopadhyay’s iconic short story, ‘Kritodas Kritodasi’ (Slave Men and Women), published in 1961. Chattopadhyay belonged to the Krittibas group, the first major literary movement in postcolonial, post-Partition Bengal. It is from the 1950s that autobiographical writing became popular among Bengali writers, looking for plots in their own lives rather than creating them with imagination, observation of social and political life or historical research.

Chattopadhyay influenced several next-generation writers, who ventured into autobiographical writing, powerful novelists Udayan Ghosh and Ajit Ray among them. In an essay on him, titled ‘Asamanya Sandipan’, poet Sankha Ghosh, a Jnanpith awardee, wrote that it was scary to be in conversation with Chattopadhyay, as one could find himself in his story or novel any day. Autobiographical writing in Bengali began with Jiban Smriti, published in 1912, which Rabindranath Tagore wrote giving a first-person account of the first 25 years of his life. Tagore preferred calling it a memoir over an autobiography. Nevertheless, it served as the pioneer of autobiographical writing in Bengali literature.

Among other major works of the colonial era, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s four-part Srikanta, published between 1917 and 1933, has also been considered autobiographical, though it deals more with external or social events than emotions and psychology. Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Apu trilogy—Pather Panchali (1921) and the two-part Aparajito (1938)—has been considered by critics as autobiographical, so has been the case with Manik Bandyopadhyay’s Putul Nacher Itikatha (1936) and Diba Ratrir Kabya (1935). The central character in these works was the writer himself, many readers believed. Manik, however, had described Diba Ratrir Kabya as metaphorical.  Premankur Atorthy’s fictionalised autobiography, Mahasthabir Jatak (1944), is considered a landmark literary work. Another important work in this genre is Atin Bandyopadhyay’s Nilkantha Pakhir Khoje, set against the backdrop of pre-Partition riots in Kolkata.

Observing one’s interior more than the exterior became a trend since the 1950s. Kicked off by the Krittibas group, the trend expanded with the Hungry Generation movement of the 1960s and was rooted deeper after the 1970s, with the beginning of the posthumous publication of Jibananda Das’ novels. Das, who died in 1954, emerged as the greatest exponent of the autobiographical novel in Bengali literature, with classics like Malyaban and Saphalata–Nishphalata.

In Malyaban, the story of the pathetic marital life of a couple, the names and occupations of the characters are different. However, readers and researchers took it to be a story of his own life. Bhumendra Guha, credited for publishing all of Das’ unpublished novels and stories, had recalled that Das’ wife, Labanya, objected to the publication of Malyaban, perhaps sensing that it would leave a bad impression about her in the public mind.

Why Das did not publish any of his novels remained a mystery. The possibility of trying to avoid unwanted disturbance in his personal life might have been a reason. Researchers have found a letter in which he offered a publisher a novel on the condition that it will have to be published under a pseudonym. “All great writers use autobiographical elements to a certain extent. In Bengali literature, the autobiographical references are quite evident, in Bibhuti Bhushan, for instance. Sandipan Chattopadhyay’s writings were more directly autobiographical. However, the greatest exponent of this genre is certainly Jibananda Das,” film and literary critic Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, a former Professor at Jadavpur University, tells Outlook.

According to Mukhopadhyay, the Partition caused a major shift in Bengali literary trends during the 1950s. “Partition demolished the 19th-century Bengali identity and writers were plagued by the question of identity—who am I, where am I? So, individual lives came to the foreground as writers sought to self-locate,” he says.  Mukhopadhyay also alludes to a new trend of autobiographical writing from among the non-elite, Dalit community, from the 1980s and 1990s, with works like Ramchandra Pramanik’s Hathak Darpan, the writings of Nalini Bera and those of Manoranjan Byapari in recent years. “All these writings have come from an urge for self-location,” he adds.

The trend in the early postcolonial period recorded the emergence of the confessional mode in autobiographical writing. There were some Western influences behind this. Chattopadhyay was deeply influenced by the Algerian–French novelist Albert Camus. “A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession” was one of his favourite Camus quotes. On the other hand, his more famous friend in the Krittibas group, Sunil Gangopadhyay, was influenced by the US Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road.  By contrast, autobiographical works of Ashapurna Devi had no western influence. Though fictionalised, her famous Satyabati trilogy, Prothom Protishruti (1964), Subarnalata (1966) and Bokulkatha (1973), is widely considered to be made of real-life stories. The trilogy dealt with family life of women in middle-class, conservative Bengali Hindu families and their self-discoveries.

Gangopadhyay’s first novel Atmaprakash was published in 1966. The writer adopted the autobiographical style, writing in first person, the protagonist being named Sunil. However, it was also fictionalised, according to Gangopadhyay’s own account in Ardhek Jiban (Half a Life). Some critics opine that Gangopadhyay took from Kerouac only descriptions of the bohemian lives Kerouac and his Beat Generation friends led but not the confessional characteristics.

Malay Roychoudhury, a Hungry Generation writer who appeared in Atmaprakash as Poritosh, wrote, “In Atmaprakash, Sunil Gangopadhyay, instead of telling the story, is suffering from doubts over whether to write a ‘boy-meets-girl’ type of entertainer or one on the bohemian lives of friends, as in Kerouac’s On The Road; he did not try to investigate the shadows. Therefore, it became neither Mills & Boon nor Kerouac.” The theme of travel with friends returned in Gangopadhyay’s writing with his 1968 novel Aranyer Din Ratri, which Satyajit Ray later turned into his eponymous 1970 film. This was about a trip that Gangopadhyay took with his friends—Sandipan, poet Shakti Chattopadhyay and writer Dipak Majumdar. However, Sandipan said it was mostly made up and went on to write a novel based on his own version of the trip, Jangoler Dinratri, a counter-narrative to Gangopadhyay’s novel and Ray’s film.

Chattopadhyay, too, has been accused of speaking half-truths, with some critics finding him to be more self-obsessed than self-critical. Udayan Ghosh was much braver than Chattopadhyay in this undressing of the self and uncovering of the darker human sides, many readers have felt. Even as Ghosh blended the genre of autobiographical writing with magic realism, his references to himself were more often than not quite direct and tragi-comic.  Roychoudhury and other Hungry Generation writers, such as poets Falguni Roy and Pradip Choudhuri and short-story writer Basudeb Dasgupta, took confessional writing more honestly. In Dasgupta’s short stories, his self-mockery and uncovering of his hidden sides leave the protagonist not as a hero but a subject of laughter and pity.

Speaking of counter-narrative, Maitreyi Devi’s Naw Honyote cannot be missed. Romanian writer Mircea Eliade had based his 1933 novel, La Nuit Bengali, on his romantic affair with the young Maitreyi during his stay in Calcutta.

Reading its translation many years later, Maitreyi, a poet of repute, found Eliade’s account coloured. She penned her own account, Naw Honyote, which was published in 1972. It has become a trend among readers to read them both together, one after the other.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Undressing the Self")