উনিশ শতকের বাংলা উপন্যাসে কৃষক সমাজের সংকট, অসন্তোষ ও বিদ্রোহ/ Agrarian Crisis and Peasant Insurrection in Bengali Novels of 19th Century

Abstract

The colonial economy ultimately marginalized the peasantry in India, a country fundamentally rooted in agriculture. At the same time, it took nearly until the middle of the twentieth century for Bengali civil society to bring that very peasantry into the mainstream and transform it into a crucial instrument of the nationalist freedom movement. Naturally, literature reflected the consciousness of the educated Bengali mind. Both the writers and the readers largely belonged to the so-called bhadralok (respectable middle-class). As a result, throughout the long nineteenth century, the number of Bengali novels that centered on the severe agrarian crisis remained extremely limited. Not only in novels but in almost all literary forms, the problems of the peasantry largely remained neglected during this period.

          Certain distinct tendencies can be observed in the novels that addressed the agrarian crisis, along with essays, plays, and newspaper reports. Among these tendencies were writers’ blind loyalty toward the British rulers and zamindars, class inequality, and a sympathetic attitude toward the so-called lower-class peasants. Even those novels that attempted to reflect peasant problems often failed to present the agrarian crisis adequately. Except Lal Behari Dey’s Govinda Samanta, hardly any novel placed small or middle peasants as the protagonist or central characters. 

           In reality, since both authors and readers belonged predominantly to the so-called upper classes, the literary sphere had not yet created a space attentive enough to hear the voices and sufferings of the peasantry. Moreover, most writers themselves came from the zamindar class or the educated urban middle class. As a result, very few were willing to take up their pens directly against the exploiting classes. The objective of this article is to identify and analyze these tendencies in the attitudes of the educated Bengali intelligentsia toward peasant life by examining a selection of Bengali novels written prior to the twentieth century. The central concern of this study is to explore how nineteenth-century Bengali novels perceived and represented the agrarian crisis, peasant discontent, struggles and revolts in Bengal.