Wrote
When Sunil Gangopadhyay went abroad
on a study tour at Iowa Poetry Workshop
funded by USAID, Sarat Kumar
Mukhopadhyay
and Belal Choudhury took up the reins.
Later Samarendra
Sengupta was editor for
some time. Some researchers have a
misconception, floated obviously by certain
pro-establishment
academicians, that
Krittibas magazine was associated with t
he Hungryalist (Hungry Generation )
movement. Krittibas was never a part of
the movement. In 1966 Krittibas editor
Sunil Gangopadhyay in his editorial made
it clear that they are against the Hungryalist
Movement and that they do not believe in the
movement at all. Krittibas
poets
Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sharat Kumar
Mukhopadhyay, Samarendra
Sengupta,
Tarapada Ray etc etc were always against the movement.
Authors who refused to support Hungryalists
during the Trial:
Shankha Ghosh, Pabitra Sarkar,
Debesh Roy, Amitava Dasgupta, Alokeranjan
Dasgupta,
Shantosh Kumar Ghosh, Abu Sayyed Ayyub,
Saroj Mukhopadhyay
etc. So today if
Sunil Ganguly is projected as a Leftist,
then it is to
some extent an exaggeration
of truth which is not vital. Towards the
end
of the Left regime in West Bengal,
Sunil Gangopadhyay came a little
close
to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the then
Chief Minister of Bengal and
he on a few
occasions supported some of the welfare
activities of the
Left Front government.
He was never a communist. On the contrary,
he was
long associated with Ananda Bazar
Patrika which was at that time denounced
by the Leftists and pro-communist writers
as a ‘bazari patrika’ (commercial paper).
His Nikhilesh and Neera series of poems
have been extremely popular. Some of
which have been translated as
For You, Neera and Murmur in the Woods.
Among his pen-names are: Nil Lohit, Sanatan Pathak.
Sunil Gangopadhyay himself had written
in his last days that most of his close friends
left him after he joined the socalled Establishmen.
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