Poet, writer and editor Samar Sen was born on this day. A committed Marxist, he did not belong to any party, though his writing and his work as a journalist always bore evidence of his Marxist beliefs. Above all he valued personal integrity.
He was one of the first “modern” poets in Bengali, with Premendra Mitra and Buddhadev Bose. Though his poetry is considered exceptional for its departure from Tagorean tradition and its sharpness, he gave up writing poetry very early, possibly because he considered it useless in his world.
He is remembered most as the founder-editor of two weekly magazines, Now and Frontier. Now brought together an exciting group of contributors, from Nirad C. Chaudhuri to Satyajit Ray and was appreciated for its incisive writing. Frontier, started with his own and his friends’ financial contributions, was unequivocally political and equally critical of all brands of politics. During the Emergency, it was one of the only sources of news.
It reported the brutal suppression of the Naxalite movement but did not shy away from talking about the conflicts and divisions within it either. For choosing the path that he did, Sen had to live with finan- cial instability.
Babu Brittanta was his book of reminiscences. He died in 1987.
