On this day Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Pather Dabi was proscribed by the British for being seditious. The novel was serialised in Bangabani, a Bengali monthly journal, between 1922 and 1926.
It captured the imagination of the public with its strident criticism of the British authorities and active call to take up arms against it. After it appeared as a book in August, 1926, 5,000 copies were sold in a week. When the police reportedly came to seize copies of the book to the office of Bangabani, no copies were to be found.
Following the proscription, Saratchandra approached Rabindranath Tagore, asking him about whether the government’s decision should be protested. In his letter to Saratchandra, Tagore replied that if one wrote a novel like Pather Dabi, one should be fully prepared for backlash from authorities.
If Saratchandra bemoaned the government’s counter-attack, his own attack would lose its significance. Tagore’s words left Saratchandra dissatisfied. The Fazlul Haque ministry in Bengal lifted the ban on the book in 1939, a year after Saratchandra’s death.
