Abstract

            The advent of modernism in Bengal was heralded by multiple signs. While the nationalist uprisings were in order, literary evolutions were also on their way. Moreover, the British government failed to implement the territorial division of Bengal based on religion in 1905. With the First World War in the picture, there were socio-political upheavals all over the world. Experiences altered and so did human perceptions and the politics of representation. As the epicentre of colonial Bengal, Kolkata witnessed major cultural transitions at the awake of the twentieth century.

            Although Rabindranath Tagore was the most favoured face of Bengal literati, a group of young writers too, tried to make their mark by exercising their power of radical penmanship during this period. Their collective journey started with the beginning of a magazine named Kallol in 1923 which gave the writers a platform to articulate their understanding of the changing world. Their motive was to present before the readers the hitherto underexplored narratives of the society, things that the respectable bhadraloks, the conformists and the conservatives would not even acknowledge, let alone accept. Influenced by European avant-garde aesthetics, the writers of the Kallol age tried to establish a counter movement in Bengali literature, much to the displeasure of the conservative reading circles. In this paper, we propose to investigate select works of the Kallol era and study how they influenced the course of thoughts and action within the Bengali intelligentsia. Although some poets would be discussed in the course of the paper, but the focus will be mostly on the select short stories associated with the magazine.