Bhabani Bhattacharya (10 November 1906 – 10 October 1988) was an Indian writer, of

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

origin, who wrote social-realist fiction. He was born in

Bhagalpur Bhagalpur, historically known as Champapuri, Champa Nagari, is a city in the Indian state of Bihar, situated on the southern bank of the Ganges river. It is the Bihar#Government and administration, third largest city of Bihar by population and ...

, part of the

Bengal Presidency The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal until 1937, later the Bengal Province, was the largest of all three presidencies of British India during Company rule in India, Company rule and later a Provinces o ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

. Bhattacharya gained a bachelor's degree from

Patna University Patna University is a public state university in Patna, Bihar, India. It was established on 1 October 1917 during the British Raj. It is the first university in Bihar and the seventh oldest university in the Indian subcontinent in the modern e ...

and a doctorate from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. He returned to India and joined the diplomatic service. Bhattacharya served in the United States, to which country he returned as a teacher of literary studies once he had left the service. He taught in Hawaii, and later in Seattle. In his mid-thirties Bhattacharya began writing fiction set in historically and socially realistic contexts. He wrote in English, his chosen medium following the advice of two prominent literary figures.

Personal life

Bhattacharya was born in

, part of the

of British India. His parents were

Bengalis Bengalis ( ), also rendered as endonym and exonym, endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The current population is divi ...

. Bhattacharya studied at

and received a bachelor's degree in English literature. He subsequently completed his graduate studies in the United Kingdom. While his original choice was to do so in literature, a hostile attitude from one of the professors prompted him to switch to history. Bhattacharya received Master's (1931) and Doctoral degrees (1934) from the

. As a graduate student, Bhattacharya became involved with Marxist circles, and was also strongly influenced by

Harold Laski Harold Joseph Laski (30 June 1893 – 24 March 1950) was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of ...

, one of his teachers. He was also active in literary circles and had work published in various magazines and newspapers. Some of Bhattacharya's articles were published in ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...

'', and he developed a friendship with the editor, Francis Yeats-Brown. During this time, Bhattacharya also interacted with

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...

. He translated Tagore's poem ''The Golden Boat'' into English in 1930. Both Yeats-Brown and Tagore advised Bhattacharya to write his fiction in English, rather than

. On completion of his doctoral studies Bhattacharya moved to

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

and soon got married. After a few years, he joined the diplomatic service, serving in the Indian Embassy in

Washington, D. C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

as a ''Press Attaché'', returning to India after completing that service. Bhattacharya accepted an offer to join the

University of Hawaii A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

as a visiting faculty, subsequently moving permanently to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

to take up a chair at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

Literary review

Writing style and reception

Bhattacharya is described as belonging to the social realism school of Indo-Anglian literature. His writings exhibit the influence of Rabindranath Tagore and

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...

. Unlike other social realists like

Premchand Dhanpat Rai Srivastava (31 July 1880 – 8 October 1936), better known as Munshi Premchand based on his pen name Premchand (), was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani language, Hindustani literature. Premchand was a pioneer ...

, Bhattacharya adopted a pedagogical approach to making novels out of ideas, utilizing satire and making his ideas more tangible through situational examples. The range of South Indian writers who seems to dominate the scene of 'Gandhian Fiction' Bhabani Bhtatacharya deserves to be mention for his first novel 'So Many Hungers'(1947), published few months after Independence. set in a context of the 1942-43 Bengal famine and Quit India Movement this complicated and didactic novel takes its characters through a rigorously Gandhian education. It is at one level, the story of Kajoli, a village girl who righteously rejects the prostitution forced on her by the destitution of her family, to sell newspapers and so also to assume the persona of the Gandhian 'New Woman.' At another level, it deals with the spiritual and political growing up of Rahoul, a Cambridge educated astrophysicist who simultaneously discovers the limits of intellectualism and Western civilization and renounces both in favour of nationalism and village based economy. Much of his instruction comes by way of his grand father, Devata, a saintly Gandhian figure with a penchant for the hunger strike, who is responsible for bringing satyagraha to the village of Baruni, where he lives like one of the peasant.

Awards

Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

, 1967

Notable works

* ''Some Memorable Yesterdays'' (Pustak Bhandar, 1941) * ''So Many Hungers!'' (Hind Kitabs Limited, 1947) * ''Indian Cavalcade'' (Nalanda Publications, 1948) * ''Music for Mohini'' (Jaico Publishing House, 1952) * ''He Who Rides a Tiger'' (Jaico Publishing House, 1955) * ''The Golden Boat'' (Jaico Publishing House, 1956) * ''Towards Universal Man'' (Visva Bharti Shantiniketan, 1961) * ''Shadow from Ladakh'' (Hind Pocket Books Ltd., 1966) * ''A Goddess Named Gold'' (Hind Pocket Books Ltd., 1967) * ''Steel Hawk and Other Stories'' (Hind Pocket Books Ltd., 1968) * ''Gandhi the Writer'' (National Book Trust, 1969) * ''A Dream in Hawaii'' (The MacMillan Company of India Limited, 1978) * ''Socio-Political Currents in Bengal: A Nineteenth Century Perspective'' (Vikas, 1980)

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bhattacharya, Bhabani 1906 births 1988 deaths Indian male novelists Indian male short story writers Indian expatriates in England English-language writers from India Novelists from Bihar Writers from Kolkata Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English Tamil writers Alumni of King's College London Alumni of the University of London 20th-century Indian novelists 20th-century Indian short story writers People from Bhagalpur 20th-century Indian male writers