Malay Roychoudhury of Hungry Generation


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"The Hungryalists" reviewed by Madhavi S Mahadevan in New Indian Express

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The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution By: Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury Publisher: Penguin Viking Pages: 272; Price: `599 Oh, I’ll die! I’ll die! I’ll die! My skin is in blazing furore I do not know what I’ll do, where I’ll go, Oh I’m sick I’ll kick all Arts in the butt and go away, Shubha. Thus begins Malay Roy Choudhury’s Bengali poem Prachanda Boidyutik Chhutar (Stark Electric Jesus). Appearing in a pamphlet in 1964, its publication resulted in arrest warrants being issued against the poet and 11 others, members of a Kolkata-based poets’ collective—the Hungry Generation. And the charges? Conspiracy against the state and literary obscenity. Who were these radicals, where did they come from and what happened to them is the substance of Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury’s non-fiction book, The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution. Well-researched, it draws on  journals, memoi...
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Malay Roychoudhury's poem 'Stark Electric Jesus' : Analysis by Prof Shital Choudhuri

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                                    In every country whenever a poet departed from the beaten path and searched for a new one, older traditionalists became very angry and tried to create problems for him. Many poets had to face humiliation and abuse for such new ventures. Very often they have had to face punishments for their works. They had to fight through their life to establish themselves. In this connection one specially remembers modern French poet Charles Baudelaire. He was kept at a distance by traditionalists during his lifetime. It is obvious that the leading light of Hungry Generation literary movement would face such attacks during his creative time. For this poet Malay Roychoudhury was even put up in lock-up and sentenced by court. Picking up the word Hungry from British poet Geoffrey Chaucer's ...
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Ashutosh Bharadwaj's argument is applicable to Hungryalist Movement

Terms of protest A writer has two chief weapons against the state: To write, and to refuse or return awards from the establishment. Written by Ashutosh Bhardwaj Why should an artist protest against the state? What can be the methods and legitimate grounds, if any, for this protest? Three senior writers have returned their Sahitya Akademi awards, saying that the state has failed to protect the freedom of speech and rights of minorities. The Akademi finds their protest “illogical” and urges them to remain apolitical as “there is no convention that the Akademi should take a stand on such issues”. The Akademi overlooks that literature, in itself, is an act of protest. The written word, as it confronts the world and its politics and aspires to lend a voice to the unheard, constitutes an essen...
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