Prof S.Mudgal
The Hungryalist Controversy
No other literary event has consistently remained as controversial in Bengali literature during this century as the Hungryalist movement
since its eruption in 1961. This literary movement was launched by
Malay Roychoudhury, Subimal Basak, Debi Ray, Saileswar Ghose, Basudeb
Dasgupta, Tridib Mitra, Subhas Ghose, Falguni Ray and Arunesh Ghose who
were in their early twenties at that time. They had coined Hungryalism from the word ‘Hungry’ used by Geofrey Chaucer in his poetic line In The Sowre Hungry Tyme. The
central theme of the movement was Oswald Spengler’s idea of History,
that an ailing culture feeds on cultural elements brought from outside.
These writers felt that Bengali culture had reached its zenith and was
now living on alien food.
The
majority of Bengalies having almost an instinctive inclination for
Marxist ideology during the post-independence era, Oswald Spengler’s
prophecy of doom and disaster was the first salvo of controversy which
made the Hungryalists unacceptable to leftist media and
professors for almost two decades. It was the individual genius of such
authors as novelist Subimal Basak and poet Malay Roychoudhury that the
barriers were broken. Subsequent researchers such as Dr Uttam Das of
Calcutta University, Prof Nandalal Sharma of Chittagong University and
Prof Howard McCord of Washington State University, however, had
explained that the social commitment in the Hungryalist writers over the years alleviated the fear of political leftists. The contribution of Prof Sankha Ghosh of Jadavpur University can not also be ignored who had made utmost efforts to sponsor and praise the Hungryalist
poet Saileswar Ghosh. It is the undercurrent of nationalist feeling
that has kept them in good stead and cut through shallow political
controversies. Nevertheless, very often their nationalism itself has led
to controversy as the Hungryalists have been criticizing politicians of all hue.
All
of these poets and writers had a lower income-group background and the
milieu contributed a special suburban nuance in their writings. The
established Bengali critics being overtly and covertly being elitist in
the 1960s, detested this milieu, and the Hungryalists became
controversial. Even their habits, dress sense, choice of words, friends
circle became controversial issues. However, over the years as these
writers and poets became financially in a better position, things
changed, and the tenor of such criticism gradually faded out. One of the
Hungryalists, viz., Debi Roy, became Secretary of Indian Writers Association.
Another
element of controversy has been the way of their expression which
probably did not suit the sophisticated Bengali intelligentsia.
Initially they used to publish handbills which carried their writings,
and these used to be distributed in Calcutta
College Street Coffee House, colleges and newspaper offices. The papers
on which these were printed were intentionally very cheap and coloured
to hurt elite sensibilities. Poetry recitals were held by them in
country-liquor shops, temples, brothels, street junctions and graveyards
as a matter of protest to exorbitant charges of regular halls. Some of
the authorities of these halls did not allow them to book the auditorium
on the ground that they were vulgar. It may seem strange now that in
the Calcutta
Book Fair of 1988, Subimal Basak’s Anthology of Superstitions was sold
out on the first day, and the publisher of Malay Roychoudhury’s
collection of poems Medhar Batanukul Ghungur was virtually mobbed by college students. It could not be an overstatement that some of the Hungryalists have become legends.
The main controversy obviously relates to their writings. Subimal Basak’s Chhatha Matha is a novel written in the dialect of East Bengali tongawallas
which captures the very essence of the street life of a decaying
generation, of people who have lost their origin, of disaster and
beyond. The language is difficult as it is not spoken by all. The raging
controversy is whether such a work can be called a piece of Art. The
amusing part of this controversy is that the book, when read out to the
common man of East Bengali origin, is understandable to him because it
is his language which the upper class people have taken care to forget.
Malay Roychoudhury is not only a controversial Hungryalist
but probably is the most controversial poet among the Bengalies today.
He was even arrested and sentenced for one of his poems by a lower
court, although the High Court rescinded that order in 1966. But his
poems remain at a distance from the general run of Bengali poets. As his
publisher’s write-up says, if poetry can be deadly then he is the
deadliest of Bengali poets; the designs of his poems are sinister, the
images are violent and vicious. His poems are a bizarre world of
flashing knife, midnight knocks, slaughtered rainbows and battered
rivers, as if the poet is an antisocial character. In his poem Alo (Light) Malay has depicted the use of light in a torture chamber where light is not enlightening but is negative.
Basudeb Dasgupta in his collection of short stories Randhanshala
had a remarkable idea of transplanting revolution. The hero of the
story stirs the water in a glass with his finger, and cuts off the
ripple of water with a blade for fixing it on the head of his friend to
make the hair curly. This has been objected to by many critics as
simplification of idealism. In his latest novel Mrityuguha,
Basudeb has raked up the controversy again in which the hero washes
utensils, and sings the ‘International’ with his pupils where he is a
teacher.
The controversies do not end here. The Hungryalists
insist that they are unable to forget their past. If you invite them
for a dinner, they may belch and fart openly, sit cross-legged on the
sofa,, make slurping-chomping sound while eating, laugh loudly, use
incorrect English, talk in Hindi or Bengali, use shabby dresses and
shoes, humiliate the bourgeois, get drunk, etc. A Hungryalist will try to prove that he is hundred percent Indian. Some of the major Hungryalists have
even refused invitations to foreign universities or poetry readings.
This might be one of the reasons why they are not invited by Doordarshan (Govt TV Channel), although Subimal Basak had been invited to attend seminars organized by Bharat Bavan of Bhopal. Malay Roychoudhury has given at least five interviews during the last couple of years.
The various controversies have actually strengthened the position of the Hungryalists
authors, inasmuch as they have revealed the tenacity of independent
thinking against all odds, which incidentally is in short supply among
the present day Indian intellectuals who are always at the beck and call
of the Establishment. Through these controversies the Hungryalist authors have proved their Indianness as well as their sincerity, that they are the only avant garde
in Bengali culture today, that they are the voice of conscience, that
they are the hope for the future. Controversy is essential for any
living society. By being controversial the Hungryalists have
consistently tried to capture and retain the centre-stage of Bengali
culture, since various vested interests have been trying to dislodge
them from that place during the last thirty years. But the Hungryalists are here to stay, and ignoring them will be crime towards Art and literature.
(Courtesy: U.S.Bahri, Editor, Language News, Shahadra, Delhi. 1988)
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