‘মানুষ চেনার প্রথম পাঠ’ : অমলেন্দু চক্রবর্তীর গ্রামজীবন চিন্তা / ‘Manush chenar Pratham path’: Amalendu Chakraborty’s Reflections on Village Life

Abstract

Time is constantly changing by the laws of nature. Society changes along with it. Naturally, these changes leave their impact on literature. The rural life of Bengal was portrayed in Rabindranath Tagore’s stories in a way that is not found in the works of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. The differences lies in the nature of life depicted. While Tagore presents the lives of his characters within a particular social context. Saratchandra standing in the same period, portrays the lives of the people at the lowest levels of rural society where the influence of time receives greater emphasis. Even before them, the majority of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s novels reflected various aspects of rural life.

In the fiction of Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Manik Bandyopadhyay, we see the people of rural Bengal living through their joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, successes and failures.

After independence, the picture of rural life changed considerably. Various peasant movements— such as Tebhaga, Telangana and Naxalbari—has come to the power of the Marxist Communist Party through the United Front government and land reforms contributed to these changes. In 1978, devastating floods in Bengal brought further changes to village life. Although the floods destroyed many mud houses, the brick-built houses remained standing. As a result, villagers began to turn their attention towards brick houses and became increasingly interested in building homes with brick walls by whatever means possible. Even before this, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, rural civilization had gradually begun to move towards an urban orientation. Progress could be seen not only in houses but also in roads, transportation, clothing, education and other aspects of rural life.

After the Partition, several writers focused particularly on rural life in West Bengal. Among them were Mahasweta Devi, Syed Mustafa Siraj, Ramapada Chowdhury and Debesh Roy. The famous Writer Amalendu Chakraborty (1934–2009) was very time conscious personality and he also wrote extensively on this subject. His literary world primarily revolves around the various districts and villages of West Bengal and the lives of their people. His writings portray numerous aspects of rural life, including the development of roads and transportation, the solitude of the night, the influence of electric lighting, people’s attachment to ancestral customs, child marriage, the dowry system, love for animals, affection for ancestral land, religious festivals, sacrificial practices, the misuse of power by greedy people under the Panchayat system, selfless love between husbands and wives, meaningful examples of friendship, conflicts between the rulers and the oppressed, various forms of industry besides agriculture, progress in education and harmony among people of different religions. Thus, alongside presenting these diverse aspects of rural life, the author has created an accurate and detailed picture of village society in his works centred on rural life.