A Centennial Tribute to Samaresh Basu | Jayanta Kumar Ghosal

Samaresh Basu (1924-1988), even after his passing away three and a half decade ago, still remains as the most representative story teller of Bengal’s suburban life, as distinct from other well known Bengali writers who had faithfully painted the life and problems of either Bengal’s rural society or the urban middle class. The major figure of modern Bengali fiction, Samaresh draws on his lived experience of Calcutta’s ‘half rural, half urban industrial suburbs, with cosmopolitan nature, where he had been a worker in a gun and shell factory, a trade union activist, as a communist whole-timer and spent a term in prison.

During his lifetime he has been at the centre of some of the most acrimonious controversies on issues relating to politics and sexuality. His vast experiences on working class life, political activism, imprisonments, police interrogation, psychological tensions and creativity have been truly reflected in his creations. Perhaps he is the only writer of post –Tagore Bengali literature who did not compromise with hypocrisy, neither in his writings nor in his life.

Born in a middle class family in East Bengal, he was at first attracted in painting and playing on flute. In 1940s he started living in Naihati, a suburb near Calcutta with his elder brother, for getting education. But formal education and the school system did never attract him. So he left school immediately before completing studies in class eight.

Naihati and its surroundings played an important role both in his life and literature. At 18 he married a girl who was older than him and left Naihati residence and set sail for an uncertain future. He used to reside in a slum, joined Ichhapur Ordance Factory near Calcutta. There he worked from 1943 to 1949. That time he was a member of CPI and was involved in trade union activities. In this period he started writing his first novel. In 1946, his first story ‘Adaab’ was published in the literary magazine ‘Parichay’ and created a sensation in the literary circle of Bengal.

In 1949 when CPI was banned by the government Samaresh was arrested. He faced police interrogation. In a powerful story ‘Sweekarokti’ ( The confession) he draws upon the memories of police interrogation cell. Here a reader sees the anger of a sensitive Communist caught in the conflict between the obligation to obey strict party dictas on the one hand and act according to basic humanitarian values on the other.

Samaresh was released from Jail in 1950. That time he decided to devote himself fully to writing. This was definitely a courageous decisioin in the situation. He had no means of income. The family with wife and children was totally dependable on him. Ichhapur Ordnace Factory offered to take him back provided he signed an undertaking declaring that he would not take part in politics. Samaresh firmly refused although he had no plan to be active again in politics. But signing a bond went against the grain of his existence.

Samaresh decided to devote himself fully the rest of his life in creative writing and kept his promise to the last and in the mid-fifties of the last century he established himself as a leading writer, not only among Bengali leftist circles, but also beyond. In 1954, he was sent to Kumbh Mela on assignment for new writing by the Desh-Anandabazar group. His fame spread with the publication of this belles lettres. He took the name ‘Kaalkut’ for writing in this new style.

He started living in Naihati again and keenly observed the suburban mentality, environment of Naihati and its adjacent areas both industrial and rural, its railway station, its lanes and by-lanes, the river bank, the familiar characters living in the area and interestingly these characters – the beggar the rickshaw puller, the driver of train, the jute mill employee, the fisherman, the typical middle class teacher, the lumpen- occupy the major place in his narratives, be it is his short story or his novel. They mainly belong to subaltern section of the society. In ‘Adaab’, his first short story, or his first novel ‘Uttaranga’ to his last unfinished novel ‘Dekhi Nai Phireys’, on the life of the legendary sculptor Ramkinkor Baiz of Santiniketan-every where the main characters come from the downtrodden.

It is also interesting that his keen observation of manners and almost photographic representation of visual images were not confined to his familiar suburban surroundings or the country side of Bengal, or the picture of the Calcutta residing upper middle class only, Samaresh also successfully painted the life and society outside Bengal in many of his narratives.

Here his experiences as a communist worker have played a vital role. He, long after leaving the party did not hesitate to confess his debt to the party about the observation powers.

His stories on political theme occupy a separate place in his literary works. For nearly four decades, from the 1940 as a CPI activist working in the trade union front in the industrial belt, his experiences of partisan activities inspired some of his fiction of earlier stage where his deep commitment to the Marxist theory of class conflict and deep faith in political activism for changing the socio-economic order have been reflected. Short stories like ‘Kimlis’ and novels like ‘BT-Roader Dharey’ belong to this category.

The bureaucratic structure of the communist movement gradually created many obstructions on him. Charges of obscenity ware levelled against him by some party leaders made him hurt and ultimately he drew away from the party. But his loyalty and sympathy and inclination toward the communist party never lost. The 1967 ‘Spring Thunders’again turned his attention towards the communist movement again. The movement was inspired by the maoist strategy and tactics of an agrarian revolution. In West Bengal during 1960-70 period despite the failure of the movement and its violent excesses, it was a force to reckon with and most of the Bengali intellectual could not remain indifferent to the issues it raised, and the sacrifice of a generation of peasant and urban youth for the cause of emancipation of the Indian people from exploitation.

Samaresh responded to the events surrounding the Naxalite movement as a creative writer. One of his best known novels ‘Mahakaler Rather Ghora’, a sad tale of a peasant leader of 1967 Naxalite armed uprising. The hero after spending many years in jail returns to his village and find his dream of a ‘Liberated Zone’ lying in a shambles. The famous short story of this period ‘Sahider Ma’ also bring us down to the turbulent’70s.

Samaresh wrote more than 250 short stories and a little over 100 novels. After Tarashankar Bandopadhaya and Manik Bandopadhaya Samaresh remaing the most powerful Bengali writer of fiction. The realities of the life of the labouring poor have been properly painted in his narratives with their totality and here the elite communists’ as well as the ‘Victorian moralists’ (both belong to snob Bengali ‘Bhadralok’ section) raise criticism on the obscenity in his fictions. In novels like ‘Bibar’ and ‘Prajapati’ Samaresh showed the great and sexual perversions of these Bengali middle class bhadraloks. His fictions deals with the descriptions of life-style followed by the respective characters and he has successfully and properly used the dialogues of different rural communities in Bengal.

Ramkinkar – the hero of his last novel once told Samaresh that he always moved forward from finishing one piece of sculpture to taking up another, and ‘never looked back’ – a path which he took following Tagore’s advice.

Samaresh also never looked back. Famous literary critic and a long time friend of Samaresh, Saroj Bandopadhyay told –‘The ever moving shape of life and the human being, stupendous when engaged in labour, dripping in sweat and weary with fatigue, but unyielding in aspiration – this was all that Samaresh Basu had as his capital in his literary career’. There was no scope for ‘looking back’ for a peoples’ writer like him.

Source :

Books on Literary Criticism of Bengali Novels
Samaresh Basu – Satyajit Chowdhury

(Author: Jayanta Kumar Ghosal is a social activist)