Coronavirus and Other Epidemics in Bengal: A Reckoning Through Literature

This chapter, divided in three sections, attempts an overview of the contemporary literary productions in Bengali, in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. It also attempts to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Bengali literature's engagement with multiple epidemics that had devastated the Bengali countryside: malaria, cholera, smallpox, etc. The repeated waves of pandemics and their representation in Bengali literature were integral in the construction of the Bengali realist novel, creating a space of ferment which allowed for reconstruction of society, reconsideration of social divisions and consolidation of social work as an extension of nationalist activities. This second section enquires in some detail about these texts, ranging from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath to Sarat Chandra Chatopadhyay’s Srikanta, from Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aranyak to Banaphul’s Jangam. The third section of the paper analyzes the construction of an alternate society through Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay’s social realist novels, written and set in the 1920s and 30s, in rural Bengal and in Calcutta. Most of his novels like Ganadebata, Dhatridebata, etc., reckon with a society in flux, dealing on one hand with colonialism, on the other, with the gradual transformation in traditional societies, the destabilization of existing hierarchies and creation of new ones. In each of these moments of epidemiological crisis, the novels also recognize extraordinary characters, individuals who had been pushed to the margins of traditional society. In moments of crisis, they transcend their marginalities through agentive action and empathy. Their action in the course of the novels, become crucial in framing the post-pandemic social relations.