The Hungryalist Controversy by Prof S. Mudgal
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, 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 a crime towards Art and literature.
(Courtesy: U.S.Bahri, Editor, Language News, Shahadra, Delhi. 1988)
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