I have the honour to forward herewith, for consideration and orders of Government, the translation of objectionable passages from the book entitled Pather Dabee written by Saratchandra Chatterjee, a well-known novelist in Bengal, printed by Satya Kinkar Banerjee from the Cotton Press, 57, Harrison Road, and published by Umaprasad Mukherjee, 77, Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, Bhawanipore, Calcutta. A printed copy of the book was sent to the Public Prosecutor Calcutta, for his opinion, and he advises that the book is liable to be proscribed under Section 99A of the Criminal Procedure Code and the author and the printer to be prosecuted under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.
(Confidential No 605/26 dated 23.11.1926)
[Charles Tegart, Commissioner of Police, Calcutta, to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal, Political Department]
The Advocate-General of Bengal, B.L. Mitter, gave his opinion in favour of proscribing the novel only, after a great deal of detailed consideration. Accordingly, the Chief Secretary, W.D.R. Prentice, issued the Gazette Notification No. 103P on 4th January, 1927, in which it was declared : the Governor in Council hereby declares to be forfeited to his Majesty all copies, wherever found, of the Bengali book entitled Pather Dabi, written by Sri Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.

‘Pather Dabi’ or ‘The Demands of the Road’, was published serially in the monthly journal Bangabani, from 1922 to 1926. The story expressed strong nationalist views & the main character was thought to be modelled on Rashbehari Bose. The British had noticed the anti-government sentiments expressed in it and were waiting for the chance to proscribe it whenever it appeared in a book form. Their chance finally materialized when it was first published as a book on 31 August, 1926. The novel was so popular that more than five thousand copies were sold out in the first week itself. The British Government machinery immediately sprung into action. The ban stayed in place as long as Sarat Chandra was alive. On the first anniversary of his death on 16 January, 1939, a meeting was held in the Albert Hall in Calcutta, where a resolution was passed for requesting the government to lift the ban. The Fazlul Haque ministry complied with the request and lifted the ban about two months later. After all those years of trials and tribulations, the second edition of ‘Pather Dabi’ was finally published in April-May 1939. Much later, in 1977, a film was made on it, titled ‘Sabyasachi’, starring the biggest matinee idol of Bengali cinema, Uttam Kumar. Needless to say, the film continues to be memorable both because of its content and its stellar cast.

If we are to be asked the question as to who is the most popular, most translated and most saleable Indian fiction writer of all times, without doubt the answer would be Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. This, not withstanding the fact that he has been dead for more than eighty years and also that he happens to be a contemporary of the mighty Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore may have been the supremo of the Indian literary scene, but Sarat Chandra literally gave him a tough competition where novels were concerned. Sarat Chandra’s magic simply refuses to wear off even after all these years. Besides the sale of his books, his novels are often adapted to celluloid – some of them multiple times. Here, one may mention the case of ‘Devdas’, a rather immature writing of his earlier years (first published in 1917), which has seen about sixteen blockbuster versions in different languages like Bengali, Hindi and Telugu. Besides the several Bengali versions, ‘Parineeta’, the novella (first published in 1916), has been made thrice in Hindi itself. The list of the other novels to be adapted to celluloid are endless – Bor Didi (1907), Bindur Chhele (1914), Palli Samaj (1916), Nishkriti (1916), Swami (1917), Srikanta (Part 1-4, 1917-1933), Dutta (1918), Grihadaha (1920) and several others.

Sarat Chandra has been eulogized as ‘katha sahityik’ or ‘the master of story-telling’ in Bengali literature. He often seemed to steal the thunder from Tagore, who was much more philosophical and his novels were several notches above the understanding of the common man. In this matter, while Tagore can be compared to Tolstoy, Sarat Chandra can certainly be compared to Dickens. Sarat Chandra’s humble background gave him a very good understanding of the life and society of the common man, especially in villages. This, coupled with the fact that his chief protagonists included women in search of emancipation within their family folds and strictly parochial society, struck a chord with the readers. The society was in the cusp of a huge change and more and more women were being educated, taking part in public life and finding worlds other than their home and hearth. The longing, the languishment, the strength of the women of Sarat Chandra’s novels to adhere to their own choices, made them extremely human. He created characters as he saw them in real life, a life whose beginning held no promises for the greatness he was to achieve later. Sarat Chandra was born on 14 September, 1876, in the village of Devanandapur in the Hooghly district of Bengal to a poverty-stricken family. He could not even go to college for lack of funds. In the absence of any real work to do, he led a pretty nomadic life in the beginning. But, his circumstances provided him with rich and varied experiences, which he was to use in his writings later on. His experiences in Burma too, provided him with a broader scape on which to base his novels and short stories on. His characters included vagabonds and zamindars, crooks and samaritans, courtesans and bored housewives, neglected widows and educated modern women – people from all spheres of life brought to life by his simple down to earth language. Sometimes he even used the pseudonym ‘Anila Devi’ in his writings. He even wrote a couple of essays on contemporary society – Narir Mulya (1923) and Swadesh O Sahitya (1932). Critics may say that his sphere was very limited – he only depicted the Bengali society, mainly the rural one and was rather dramatic in his treatment – but the varied colours he imparted to this narrow sphere, speaks volumes of his talent. Sarat Chandra himself had said, “Most of the characters and events in my novels are based on my own experiences”.

Sarat Chandra was a much feted writer during his lifetime. He was at times compared to Guy de Maupassant, the master French storyteller. He received several awards and honours for his immense contribution to Bengali literature. In 1903, he received the Kuntalin Puraskar for his very first story ‘Mandir’, in the very year that Rabindranath’s iconic novel ‘Chokher Bali’ was published. He received the Jagattarini Gold Medal from the Calcutta University in 1932. He was given a membership of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad in 1934 and was honoured with a D.Litt by the Dhaka University in 1936. Sarat Chandra’s greatness lay in the fact that he was an observer of the life of the common man from close quarters and was hence able to break the mould of the Baboo Culture so commonly propagated in the works of his predecessors. He thus achieved a degree of reality so uncommon in contemporary literature and became the predecessor of a succeeding generation of writers for whom realism was the forte.