Sahitya Akademi

TARASHANKAR'S WORLD OF CHANGES AND THE NEW ORDER

Author(s): Mahasweta Devi and MAHASVETA DEVI
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 12, No. 1 (MARCH 1969), pp. 71-79
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23329119
Accessed: 01-02-2016 17:28 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Sahitya Akademi is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Indian Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 TARASHANKAR'S WORLD OF
CHANGES AND THE NEW ORDER

MAHASVETA DEVI

lARASHANKAR Bandyopadhyay, our foremost living

novelist, was born at Labhpur, his native village, in

July 1898. Labhpur, a flourishing village in Birbhum,

is famous in the mythology as one among the fifty-one 'Shakti

Pithas', its old name being Attahasa. Shakti and Vishnu

cults are equally strong at Labhpur. Birbhum, like all other
districts of Bengal, is very rich in folk music. Tarashankar,
as a child, literally woke up in the mornings listening to Baul,
Vaishnava and Shakta singers and to Muslim devotees who

sang dedications to Muslim 'Pirs' and Hindu 'Patuas'

gods.
came with handpainted canvas depicting the life stories of
Lord Krishna and Sri Chaitanya and showed them to villagers,

singing songs. These strange, nomadic people are Muslims.

The professional snake-charmers, so well-known to his readers,

are Muslims too. The 'Bedias' or snake-charmers are pro

verbially handsome, their women fearless and lusty dancers.
Then there are 'Bajikars', typical nomads. Their women
sell love potions and magic drugs to credulous and
villagers
their men hunt hares, rat snakes, giant lizards and porcupines.
It is necessary to describe these at some because
people length
all of them have contributed towards the of the writer.
making
The red and dry soil of Birbhum, the distant villages where

71

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 INDIAN LITERATURE

primitive rituals survived thousands of years of advanced

Hinduism, the dust storms screeching like witches in agony,

the monsoons bringing relief to the scorching earth, all these

are important too. Because Tarashankar's major writings are

empirical, deeply rooted in his native soil.

His father was not a big zemindar and after his death in

his childhood Tarashankar passed through strenuous days

for a long time. Patriotism was early roused in him by his

parents. The mother of Dhatri Devata, one of his early novels,

is in the shadow of his own mother. In later life, when he

received an offer from Bombay to earn easy money, he could

refuse it without thinking twice. His mother blessed his

decision and advised him to stick only to the dictates of his

conscience. Hers has been an abiding influence on him.

His first short story was published in Kallol, a magazine

that was a resort of the aspirant rebel writers of Bengal.

Many of our prominent littérateurs belong to what has come

to be known as the 'Kallol group'.

Manjari of 'Rasakali', his first short story, is none but

Kamalini, a Vaishnava woman, one of his wayside acquaint

ances. He knew all these people and wanted to write about

them. He does not believe that writing can be taught. For

every writer, it is his own personal battle. This now famous

short story was rejected by one of the leading monthlies of the

day. Kallol published it later, praising it highly. In 1929,

he tried his hand at playwriting, but the door of the profes
sional stage was closed to an aspirant playwright. Mean

while, he was arrested as a fighter for freedom and as a prisoner

was horrified to see the dirty political squabble that kept our
freedom busy in jail. Even then he had contemplated
fighters
two novels, Chaitali Ghurni and Pashaan Puri. He did not

look towards politics as a career and later told Subhash

Chandra Bose that people like him came to serve Congress

and not to do His mother once told him
hero-worshipping.
to listen to the dictates of his own conscience and Tarashankar,
with all his successes and failures as a writer, has always tried

to abide by his conscience, both as a writer and as a man.

The man and the writer are one in him.

72

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 TARASHANKAR'S WORLD

The village life as he knew in childhood was already break

ing. The zemindars and professional moneylenders were

ruining the economic life of the ever oppressed Bengal peasant

ry. Malaria took its yearly toll of lives and God, the last

resort, was always silent. Tarashankar had too warm a

heart to live in the enchanted world of ideas when there was

such a lot to do. He became the president of the local village

union board and started touring in villages. The urge to

know people acted in his blood stronger than any intoxica

tion. Suchand and Nasubala of Hansuli Banker Upakatha,
the village poet of Kavi, he knows these people in real life.

His life is full of vicissitudes. He has had to go through dire

poverty. Clash with the powerful government officials of
his days was often unavoidable due to the skyhigh arrogance
of the representatives of the British crown. By early sur

rendering the supervision of the meagre landed property to

his younger brother he deliberately chose the life of poverty
in order to become a writer. At one time he tried cure of

snake-bite as a profession. Many of his stories and novels are

lively with his interest in animal and snake behaviour.

When he came to write, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay

and Manik Bandyopadhyay had already distinguished them
selves as writers of great promise. Kallol and Kali o Kalam
had introduced a set of writers who brought many things to

Bengali literature including new poetry, naturalism, urbanity

and a deep love for the European writers of the day. The
writers and critics of the older generation were critical of them,

but at the same time they went out of their ways to encourage

these young rebels. An entirely different and purely intellec

tual circle was gathering around the great critic and poet,
Sudhindranath Datta. Subhash Chandra was the dream of

the youth of the day. Nazrul's poems were read like

being

gospels. One felt an attempt to break with the past and create
the language of one's own in the literary trend of the day.
It was a good time to try one's hand at writing. One could

always count on Tagore's blessings, who took an abiding

interest in the writers of the day.

73

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 INDIAN LITERATURE

Tarashankar met Tagore for the first time at Santiniketan

at a village workers' conference. By that time his stories

were being published in periodicals and he was fast coming

into prominence. Some modern writers of the day criticised

him as a loud writer, lacking in finesse. Self-conscious and

naturally shy, he did not send his books to Tagore though he

wanted to, very much. After much hesitation he sent his

books Rai Kamal, a novel, and Chhalanamoyee, a book of short

stories, to the poet. Tagore wrote to him saying that he

had enjoyed reading Rai Kamal. Later, Tarashankar wanted

to know from the poet whether his words were merely consola

tory or not, since he was being criticised as a crude writer.

Tagore's reply, which reached him within four days, began

with the lines that he did not know who criticised him but
he, was pleased because Tarashankar did not belong
Tagore,
to the of writers who did not believe in story telling. He
group
the stories of Chhalanamoyee liberally. Tarashankar
praised
went to see him at Santiniketan. The visit is memorable for

various reasons. Tagore greatly appreciated the fact that

Tarashankar wrote from his personal experience of village

life and asked the author not to see life as an outsider.
younger
literary criticism in our country he told some reveal
Discussing
home truths, such as that a writer, particularly a rising
ing
should be to take the blows in his stride. Such
one, prepared

blows, he said, were inevitable for writers born in this country

and even had not been It was the time

he, Tagore, spared.
when the Ministry of Bengal was trying to introduce
League
more Arabic and Persian words in the Bengali language and

was at the attitude of the authority.

Tagore greatly pained
liked Tarashankar's story about a village
Tagore specially
witch. A well-known writer of the day told Tagore that

the must have been a borrowed one, belonging to Europe.

plot
was sorry to see our writers' lamentable ignorance
Tagore
about their own Tarashankar has a special weak
country.
ness for his 'Rai Bari' because it has an association with
story
The had read the story in 1937 when he was
Tagore. poet
ill with In the story the hero abandons
severely Erysipelas.
the idea of leaving home and comes back when he sees the

74

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 TARASHANKAR'S WORLD

lights burning in the banquet hall. The poet found that the
hero's experience had some identification with his own experi
ence of returning to consciousness after prolonged illness of

several days. Tarashankar greatly respects the seer in Tagore.

His respect for Tagore and Gandhi remains unshaken at the

twilight of his life.

Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay has sometimes been com

pared to Faulkner and Hardy. While it is true that no

writer writes like another, it is also a fact that comparisons

do often come to critics' minds. All of them are regional
novelists but the comparison ends there. Tarashankar's

'Rarh' is not purely rural like Hardy's Wessex, nor is it a

half mythical country like Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha county.

Tarashankar is not preoccupied with an inherited sin and

the atonement of it, like Faulkner. Not an essential poet

like Hardy, he has not Hardy's resigned acceptance of the

disappearance of a way of life. Nature for him is something

essential in the scheme of his novels and as a nature-lover

he cannot be compared with Bihutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

of his own time. More preoccupied with theme, Tarashan

kar has never cared truly enough to become a superior crafts

man or a mere stylist. He lacks in conscious artistry. Still,

his major novels are about his Birbhum and its people, his

last major novel being Arogya Niketan.

No land in Bengali fiction lives more vividly than his

Birbhum with its relentless summer, the plentiful autumn and

the month of rains. And no other land in Bengali fiction is

more painstakingly analysed from the sociological standpoint

either. The vanished indigo-planters, the descendants of

the old feudal families, the plight of the landless land labou
rers under the new masters, the upcoming capitalists created

mostly from the old zemindars, the new labour class created

from the landless peasants, the scholar brahmins adhering to

the old values, the village peasants newly conscious of their

rights, they are all here. The marks of class, occupation and

history are fully rendered and we know all about their beliefs,

festivals, superstitions, social customs and revenue laws, their

75

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 INDIAN LITERATURE

legends and myths, their limitations and their sins. He gives

a most faithful portrayal of nature, sociology, geography,

demography and human geography. He is our greatest

demographer. The significance of his materials for his work

is very great. In all these characteristics he is akin to Faulkner

if to any Western writer, even if superficially. But, for Faulk

ner, 'the significance is of a conditioning order. They are,

as it were, of man's doom....5 There is no sense of
aspects
doom in Tarashankar's novels. A faithful social analyst,
he writes of the elimination of Bansbadi village and its 'Kahar'

people and describes how the Second World War has indirectly

brought changes in the living pattern of the remotest villages

and has released the 'Kahars' from the time-old bondage of

slavery to the feudalistic order of life. In this novel, Hansuli

Banker Upakatha, Banoari, a glorious representative of the old

order, a believer in God and omnipotence of the zemindar,

has to die because he cannot adapt himself to the new order

of things. He will not allow his people, the 'Kahars', to

abandon cultivation even when these landless field labourers

face starvation. He will not let them work in the railyard

because, for him, a change of profession is a sin. The whist

of the viper of the bamboo grove is God's warning

ling gigantic
to him, so he wants to atone the snake's killing with worship
and sacrifices. But to Karali, another landless 'Kahar',
war is not a curse. War offers him and the others employ
ment and a chance to change their living habits, the endless

land-tilling to fill the zemindar's granary being so illpaying

and So, he kills the snake as a snake. It is
frustrating.
not a myth to him as it is to Suchand, Banoari and others.

Karali and his followers know how to survive. So they live.

Banoari's death, like the death of the snake, is the death of a

decrepit and disused symbol, the end of an era.

Tarashankar does not make any comparison between the

two generations. He achieves the detachment of an imper

sonal story-teller in his major novels. But it is obvious to

his readers that he believes in survival. His sympathy for the

vanishing way of life is apparent in his few major short stories

and novels such as Jalsaghar, 'Rai Bari', Arogya Niketan,

76

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 TARASHANKAR'S WORLD

Hansuli Banker Upakatha, Ganadevata and Panchagraam. But

his sympathy never clouds his judgment. All his major

characters have to accept the changes and adapt themselves
to the new order of things because living is much more impor
tant than dying, which is always futile. Nyaayaratna of

Ganadevata and Panchagraam goes to exile at Benares in his

last days but Debu comes back from his exile to come down

from his self-created pedestal and to accept Swarna's love so

that they can create a new generation of men. Only thus he
can do what he has to, by accepting an ordinary man's fate.

Tarashankar's realism is often ruthless. The Sriharis

and Mukherjees and Daulat Mians of his novels grow more

rich by evicting peasants and usurping their lands. The

poor gets poorer. Non-believers flourish but Banoari and

Raham, two firm believers, die tragically, rejected by their

gods and with their universe in ruins. Yet, since in his

major works the author tries to find the synthesis—the missing

link of unity—in the present disorder of things, he can be

romantically idealist too.

His reading in Indian scripture and mythology is

amazing.

Equally amazing is his deep knowledge of the political and

economic condition of his country. The most important
thing in Tarashankar's literature is the deep sense of dignity
in his characters. It comes from his equally deep and frank

respect for humanity at large. Almost all his characters

have this innate sense of dignity in them. He upholds this

image of dignity because he believes it is truly Indian. In

India, he considers, poverty does not necessarily rob a man of

his dignity. He will not believe that it is more true of the
India of yesterday when the difference between the classes
was not so glaring, that it is highly difficult to maintain the
same sense of dignity in spite of great poverty in today's India,
where the country's economy no longer depends on
mainly
agriculture.

Once he had told Tagore that he was not closely acquaint

ed with literature of Europe, which might have been true

once, though literature of other countries may not be so

77

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 INDIAN LITERATURE

unknown to him today. Yet, after almost forty years of a

busy literary career he is strangely uninfluenced by other

writers or other literary trends. He is a highly emotional

writer, writing in a straightforward, realistic style, in unadorn

ed language. His language is unadorned, yet rich and

forceful. He has made extensive use of the local dialect of

Birbhum, especially in his Hansuli Banker Upakatha. His

knowledge of small town people who make the undercurrent

of the mainstream of urban life is very intimate. He knows

the language too of those truck-drivers and railyard coolies,

the industrial workers and the lower middle class. He is

very word-conscious or in love with words and sometimes

creates great effect with subtle and conscious use of a single

word, as in his story 'Naa' with the word 'Naa' (an emphatic

('No') and in the story 'Andhakar' with the word 'Andhakar'

(meaning darkness). He is not a subtle like

psychologist
Manik Bandhyopadhyay, in his highly urbanised way who
could, like a good diagnostician, lay his finger on the cancer
that is eating into the root of the Bengali middle class. Manik

Bandhyopadhyay's so called pessimistic writings exposing

hollow men are far better than his later ideologically inspired

writings. The appeal of Tarashankar's writings too does not

dwell in his ideological inspiration. He is neither a sophisti

cated writer like Manik Bandhyopadhyay nor an inspired
visualiser like Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhyopadhyay, for whom
the world remains eternally enchanted. Bibhuti Bhushan

was deeply devotional and poetically remantic. The existence

of a forest, a child's laughter, sometime a Muslim peasant's

prayer gave him immense joy and renewed his faith in God.

Tarashankar is different from him too. The chief appeal

of his major works shall always be in his deep knowledge of
his material and his loving handling of it, and in his abiding
faith in man. The man and the writer, as already said,
are very much mixed in Tarashankar. He has no mask to

offer to the world as many writers have. 'Cult' of the 'mask'—

—the 'persona'—is such a necessity and a refuge for the wri
ters of today. A writer's responsibility can be very great,
in fact it never ceases; and more a writer gets involved with

78

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 TARASHANKAR'S WORLD

the exclusive problems of his writing, the more he feels the

necessity of a mask, a shield, a shell, like that of a shellfish

to protect his own raw, quivering writer's self.
A writer is seldom a happy man. Tarashankar is lucky
in not feeling any such necessity to protect his image. Per

haps many problems do not exist for him. So he can afford

to remain sensitive yet courageous enough to take blows, to

remain involved and detached at the same time. Perhaps
that is the reason why he can afford to retain a burning faith

in this age of lost faiths and broken images. A writer with

too many messages is always rather awe-inspiring and fright

ening because his faith is always so burning, his characters

always such giants. Tarashankar is such a writer.

79

This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:28:42 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions