ঐতিহ্য, আধুনিকতা ও সাংস্কৃতিক পরিচয়ের দ্বন্দ্ব : তারাশঙ্কর বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় ও চিনুয়া আচেবের ছোটগল্পের এক তুলনামূলক বিশ্লেষণ/ Tradition, Modernity, and the Crisis of Cultural Identity : A Comparative Study of the Short Stories of Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay an

Abstract

Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay and Chinua Achebe stand as two of the most significant literary voices in Bangla and African literature, each offering a profound representation of the cultural, economic, and political transformations of their respective societies. Writing from within moments of intense historical transition, both authors foreground the tension between tradition and modernity as a central dimension of human experience in postcolonial contexts. In Tarashankar’s Jalsaghar, the decline of the zamindari order in rural Bengal is portrayed alongside the emergence of capitalist modernity; similarly, in Achebe’s Dead Men’s Path and Marriage Is a Private Affair, the confrontation between Western mod ernity and indigenous cultural values unfolds within the colonial African context, producing psychological conflict, social division, and cultural dislocation.

         This article adopts a comparative and interpretive framework to explore the dynamics of social transformation, mental colonization, and cultural in-betweenness in the selected short stories of the two writers. Drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the “Third Space” and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s notion of the “colonization of the mind,” the study argues that both Tarashankar’s feudal Bengali milieu and Achebe’s colonially disrupted African society are shaped by profound internal crises, in which the encounter between inherited traditions and modern forces generates hybrid and unstable forms of cultural identity. Through nuanced narrative strategies and deep historical awareness, both authors represent the changing realities of their societies with remarkable human sympathy and critical insight. As a result, their short stories transcend specific national and ethnic locations to articulate a broader and more universal crisis of identity in times of social change. The analysis ultimately demonstrates that, for both writers, the conflict between tradition and modernity is not merely a social or cultural issue, but fundamentally a crisis of human identity.