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Periodical Readership in Early Twentieth Century Bengal: Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabāsī*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2012

SAMARPITA MITRA
SAMARPITA MITRA*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper investigates some key questions regarding the socio-cultural implications of a relatively understudied print media, the literary miscellany, its production and consumption in early twentieth century British Bengal. Through a study of Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabāsī, a major literary journal that set the trend of sacitra māsik patrikā or illustrated monthly magazine in Bāṅglā, its literary innovations and editorial interventions, this paper explores how periodical reading and the notions of aesthetics and culture that it cultivated became intimately tied up with questions of middle class identity and class differentiation. It shows how this pioneering sacitra patrikā came to command a literary and visual space that, by the time of the Swadeshi years, was conceived as co-extensive with the future sovereign nation. Problematizing notions of a quotidian practice like leisure-reading that had become integral to the lifestyles of an expanding middle class, this study shows how Prabāsī not only lent new meanings to ideas of sustained interest and participation in public life amongst its readers, but that it also represented a self-consciously, high-brow cultural sensitivity that the Bengali bhadralok were to claim and safeguard as their own.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 204 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to my dissertation advisor, Sudipta Sen, for his help and support. I am indebted to Gautam Bhadra, Partha Chatterjee, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Anjan Ghosh, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Clinton Seely for their valuable suggestions at various stages of research and writing.

References

1 Here I shall be concerned with Prabāsī form the time of its inception till about the late 1920s though Ramananda Chattopadhyay continued to edit the magazine until his death in 1943 and thereafter publication continued right till the 1970s.

2 Bhadra, G. (2011). Nyāṛā Baṭtalāẏa Yāẏa Kabāra? Chhatim, KolkataGoogle Scholar; Blackburn, S. (2003). Print, Folklore and Nationalism in colonial South India, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; Blackburn, S. and Dalmia, V. (2004). India's Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; Dalmia, V. (1997). Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harishchandra and Nineteenth Century Banaras, Oxford University Press (OUP)Google Scholar; Ghosh, A. (2006). Power in Print: popular publishing and the politics of language and culture in a colonial society 1778–1905, OUPGoogle Scholar; Joshi, P. (2003). In Another Country: colonialism, culture and the English novel in India, OUPGoogle Scholar; Kesavan, B. S. (1962). The National Bibliography of Indian Literature 1901–1953, Sahitya AkademiGoogle Scholar; Khan, M. H. (1999). The Bengali Book: History of Printing and Book Making, 1667–1866, DhakaGoogle Scholar; Khare, P. S. (1964). The Growth of Press and Public Opinion in India (1857–1918), AllahabadGoogle Scholar; Naregal, V. (2001). Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; Orsini, P. (2002). The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: language and literature in the age of nationalism, OUPGoogle Scholar; Priolkar, A. K. (1958). The Printing Press in India: Its Beginnings and Early Development, BombayGoogle Scholar; Stark, U. (2007). An Empire of Books: the Naval Kishore Press and the diffusion of the printed word in colonial India, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; Venkatachalapathy, A. R. (1994). Reading Practices and Modes of Reading in Colonial Tamil Nadu, Studies in History, 10, 273–290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Chatterjee, P. (1992). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, OUP, pp. 1–13Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid..

6 In his address at the inauguration of the new building of the Baṅgīẏa Sāhitya Pariṣada (1901) the editor of the journal Sāhitya, Sureshchandra Samajpati, asserted: ‘. . .sāhitya bhinna anya kṣetre jātir jātīẏatā pratiṣṭhita haẏite pāre nā.’ (Apart from the field of literature, in no other realm can the nation's nationality be established). For an account of how the literary practice came to be conceived as the most significant act of devotion to the nation, see Mitra, S. (2010), ‘At the altar of Baṅgalakṣmī: literary community (sāhitya samāj) and literary practice (sāhitya sebā) in Swadeshi Bengal’, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, CalcuttaGoogle Scholar, Occasional Paper (Forthcoming).

7 The various socio-cultural debates that animated the pages of the literary periodicals testify to the contentious nature of the ‘desired’ level of education and aesthetic sense amongst the masses.

8 Chatterjee has argued that after securing its sovereignty in the sphere of national culture, nationalism inserts ‘itself in to a new public sphere constituted by the processes and forms of the modern (in this case, colonial) state’. Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, p. 10.

9 Ibid, pp. 10–11.

10 Cohn, B. (1987). ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’ in Cohn, B.An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, OUPGoogle Scholar; Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, pp. 223–224.

11 Ibid., pp. 221–224.

12 Ibid., p. 222.

13 Mathew Arnold in his Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869) and Essays in Criticism (1865) heirarchized mental faculties and positioned creativity (i.e. poetry) over critical forms of knowledge (most importantly literary criticism). He also spoke of ‘culture’ as an endless, creative process towards perfection and as something that could be acquired with practice. Arnold was widely read in early twentieth century Bengal and his ideas influenced conceptualization of the literary sphere as essentially open-ended, access to which was at least theoretically conditioned not by social origin but by education acquired through practice.

14 That the literary sphere was imagined as essentially a space of harmony is evident in Rabindranath Thakur's repeated insistence on literature (sāhitya) as a milan kṣetra (literally the field of confluence).

15 Beetham, M. (1996). A Magazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800–1914, RoutledgeGoogle Scholar.

16 Obviously print was only one amongst various forms of sociability and social mobilization in colonial South Asia. Empirical data on the different aspects of production, transmission and consumption of literary periodicals gleaned primarily from the Bengal Library Catalogues are not simply insufficient but also need to be considered in the light of enduring traditions of orality and oral transmissions of literary texts.

17 See Chakrabarty, D. (2000). ‘Adda: A History of Sociality’ in Chakrabarty, D.Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press, pp. 180–213Google Scholar.

18 Houghton, W. E. (1982). ‘Periodical Literature and the Articulate Classes’ in Shattock, J. and Wolff, M.The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, Leicester University Press and University of Toronto Press, pp. 3–27Google Scholar. Houghton exemplifies the periodical nature of Arnold's Culture and Anarchy that assumed the book form only after a series of essays had been published in the Cornhill and other major reviews and the author had negotiated the criticisms that came up in other monthlies or weeklies.

19 Gramsci, A. (1991). ‘Journalism: Types of Periodical: [External Appearance]’ in Gramsci, A.Selections from Cultural Writings, Harvard University Press, pp. 406–407Google Scholar. Gramsci argues that ‘The surface appearance of a review is of great importance both commercially and “ideologically” (to secure fidelity and affection). In this case it is in fact hard to distinguish the commercial from the ideological aspect.’ He goes on to elaborate the importance of typescript, ink, attractiveness of headlines, margins and line spacing, quality of paper etc., and states that ‘Only in exceptional conditions, in specific periods of boom in public opinion, does it occur that an opinion is successful whatever the outward form in which it is presented’.

20 For an insightful historical narrative of print productions from Baṭtalā, their reception amongst various classes and social groups and the ways in which this ‘low-life’ of print significantly inflects notions of a renaissance in nineteenth century Bengal, see Ghosh, Power in Print.

21 On the first impact of Bankimchandra's Baṅgadarśana, Rabindranath wrote: ‘Making Baṅgadarśana its vehicle (Baṅgadarśana ke abalamban kariẏā), an unrelenting talent (pratibhā) broke down the barriers (bybadhān) between our English education (Ingreji śikṣā) and our internal selves (antaḥkaraṇ)’. Rabindranath Thakur, ‘Śikṣāra Herpher’ in Sādhanā, Pouṣ 1299/December–January 1892–1893. Through Baṅgadarśana Bankimchandra sought precisely to wean away the educated elite from what he saw as their fascination with the English language. For a study of the cultural agenda of the elite writing in English and French, see Chaudhuri, R. (2002). Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project, Seagull, 2002Google Scholar.

22 For Rabindranath's vision of a modern civic life, see Chatterjee, P. (2001). ‘On civil and political society in postcolonial democracies’ in Kaviraj, S. and Khilnani, S.Civil Society: History and Possibilities, Cambridge University Press, pp. 168–169Google Scholar.

23 Pramatha Chaudhuri, ‘Baṅga Sāhityera Nabayuga’ in a feature entitled ‘Kaṣṭipāthar’ in Prabāsī, Kārtik 1320/October–November 1913.

24 Pramatha Chaudhuri, ‘Baṅga Sāhityera Nabayuga’.

25 This was one of the major reasons why Bankim decided to discontinue Baṅgadarśana in 1876. Nabinchandra Sen, Āmār Jīban, Calcutta, 1974, pp. 460–461.

26 Rabindranath observed: Ekhon lekhak o pāṭhaker saṃkhya gaṇiẏā uṭhā kaṭhin. Ekhon racanā bicitra, rūci bicitra. Ekhon lekhak-pāṭhaker madhye nānāprakār śreṇīr bibhāga ghatiẏāche (Nowadays it is difficult to enumerate numbers of writers and readers. Composition and taste are both very diverse. Now there are a range of differentiations within the community of writers and readers). Rabindranath Thakur, ‘Sūcanā’ in Nabaparyāẏ Baṅgadarśana, Baiśākh 1308/April–May 1902. While differentiating the agenda of the two Baṅgadarśana Rabindranath nevertheless reiterated the enduring relevance of Bankim's aesthetic legacy and emphasized the need to continuously engage with it. For detailed studies of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and his formulation of a modern Bengali sub-national culture, see Chatterjee, P. (1986). ‘The Moment of Departure: Culture and Power in the Thought of Bankimchandra’ in Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Oxford University Press, pp. 54–84Google Scholar. Also see, Kaviraj, S. (1998). The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of a Nationalist Discourse, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar.

27 Chaudhuri, R. (2002). ‘A New Race of Men in the East’ in Gentlemen Poets and Joshi, P. ‘By Way of Transition: Bankim's Will, or Indigenizing the Novel in India’ in In Another Country have shown how Western literary genres and practices, especially modern verse forms and fiction were indigenously adapted and how these processes of adaptation variously embodied the cultural politics of the educated colonial elite.

28 Major science and medical journals included Bijṅān (1894 and 1912), Bijṅān Darpaṇa (1882 and 1909), Cikiṯsā Darpaṇa (1871 and 1920), Cikiṯsak (1889), Cikiṯsā Prakāś (1908). Major caste-based periodicals included Tili Samācār (1919), Kāẏastha Patrikā (1902), Baiśya Patrikā (1910) and Baidya Hitaiṣīni (1925). Organs of spiritual communities included Baiṣṇab (1886) and Baiṣṇab Sandarbha (1903).

29 For instance, both Jyotirmoyee Devi and Purnasashi Devi speak of having encountered ‘prohibited’ books in their respective family libraries. Adult males of reasonably educated families were lured in to reading Baṭtalā books in private while women's readings of such lesser prints were condemned as deviant and adolescent girls were to be entirely distanced from these books. Devi, Purnasashi, ‘Smṝtikathā’ in Bandopadhyay, Arunkumar and Sen, Abhijit (eds) Pūrṇaśaśī Devīr Nirbācita Racanā, School of Women's Studies (Jadavpur University) and Dey's Publishing, Calcutta, 1998Google Scholar; pp 230–31 and Devi, Jyotirmoyee, Smṝti Bismṝtir Taraṅge, Calcutta, 1986, p. 30Google Scholar.

30 For a historical account of the dialectics between elite and popular cultures in nineteenth century Calcutta, see Banerjee, S. (1989). Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Seagull BooksGoogle Scholar and Banerjee, S. (1987). ‘Bogey of the Bawdy: Changing Concepts of “Obscenity” in Nineteenth century Bengali Culture’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22:29, 1197–1206Google Scholar.

31 Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste, translated by Nice, Richard, Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 11–96Google Scholar; Bermingham, A. and Brewer, J. (1995), The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, Routledge, pp. 9–13Google Scholar.

32 Prabāsī (1901) continued for nearly seven decades, Bhāratvarṣa (1913) continued for over half a century and Māsik Basumatī (1922) for over 50 years. Baṅgabāṇī (1922), Uttarā (1925) and Mānasī O Marmabāṇī (1916) were amongst other significant illustrated miscellanies but these did not continue for very long. The only journals of the pre-Prabāsī years that continued well into the early twentieth century were Bhāratī (1877–1926) and Nabyabhārat (1883–1925).

33 Bengali uni-Lingual Periodicals were classified under the following categories: Art, Law, Medicine, Religion, Miscellaneous and History (including geography). The Category ‘Miscellaneous’ periodical shows the largest number of publications over the years since 1867 when the Book and Periodical Registration Act (Act XXV of 1867) was passed.

34 It is interesting that at the time Rabindranath Thakur edited Sādhanā in the 1890s subscription to periodicals was called dān literally meaning donation (Letter from Dwijendralal Ray to Rabindranath Thakur dated 6 September 1895, Rabindra-Bhavan Archives, Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan). When Ramananda Chattopadhyay spoke of subscription dues he used the term dām or dar (meaning price).

35 This in spite of the fact that several writers who wrote in various journals during the last few decades of the nineteenth century continued to contribute to the early twentieth century journals as well.

36 Ray, Nikhilnath, quoted in Gita Chattopadhyay, Bangla Samayik Patrika Panji, 1915–1930, Calcutta, pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

37 In his Presidential Address to the 1909 Rajshahi Sahitya Sammelan, Prafulla Chandra Ray provided detailed statistics for the years 1901–1907 to demonstrate the abundance of fiction in comparison with more academically specialized disciplines like History. Prabāsī, Phālgun 1315/February–March 1909.

38 Pradīp, Agrahāẏaṇ, 1307/November–December 1900. A young and amateur writer Rajanikanta Guha wrote of his experience in receiving payment from Prabāsī for his contribution of an essay entitled ‘Hindu, Grīk O Romān’ (Jyaiṣṭha, 1308/May–June 1901). He mentioned that his payment was at a rate at par with what the editor himself and Dineshchandra Sen received from Bhāratī. Devi, Shanta (2005). Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka: Ramananda Chattopadhyay o Ardhaśatābdīr Bāṅglā, Calcutta: Dey's Publishing, p. 179Google Scholar.

39 Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka, p. 178. Ulrike Stark has shown that once print reached the stage of commercialization, ‘it provided a hitherto unknown general access to the products of written culture among literate audiences’. See Stark, An Empire of Books, p. 19.

40 Circulation figures can be gathered from the Catalogue of Books and Periodicals published in the Bengal Presidency compiled by the Librarian of the Bengal Library and keeper of the Catalogue of Books under Section XVIII of Act XXV of 1867. According to these Catalogues, in 1903 (Volume 4) Prabāsī’s circulation was 2000 while that of Bhāratī was 1250 and that of Baṅgadarśana (Navaparyāẏa) was 500. By 1910 (Volume 4) Prabāsī's circulation had touched 4000, Bhāratī’s 1750 and Baṅgadarśana's 1000. It must also be remembered that 1910 was the year when the Press Act was passed to check subversion in literature.

41 Chronologically Debiprasanna Raychaudhury's journal Navyabhārat started much before Prabāsī. The 1891 report on publications issued and registered during the year 1890 in several provinces of British India, Haraprasad Shastri, Librarian at the Bengal Library observed that Nabyabhārat and Bhāratī-O-Bālaka were the only periodicals that were ‘written with ability and issued with punctuality. The rest of the papers are short-lived and do not show much vigor’. Prabāsī was really the pioneer insofar as family magazines were concerned.

42 There was an unwritten, informal rule that Rabindranath's best works—serial novels, travelogues, essays and short stories—would appear mainly in Prabāsī. Ramananda Chattopadhyay was disappointed when Tagore agreed to contribute a great deal to Upendranath Gangopadhyay's Bicitrā. Rabindranath considered his relations with Chattopadhyay and Prabāsī as non-commercial. Gangopadhyay on the other hand had promised Rabindranath relatively handsome remuneration. This was at a time when Rabindranath hoped to use his writings for proceeds that would help Viswa Bharati to tide over its financial difficulties. Consequently his novel Yogāyog and numerous other short stories and poems appeared in Bicitrā. See Gangopadhyay, Upendranath, Smṛtikathā, volume IV, D.M. Library, Calcutta, 1952Google Scholar; and Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka.

43 Rabindranath Thakur, Letter to Sudhindranath Dutta, printed in Paricaẏa Kārtika 1338/October–November 1931.

44 Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka p. 371.

45 Ibid, p. 140.

46 Chattopadhyay wrote on Manmathanath Bhattacharya (Accountant General of the Punjab Province, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’ Māgh 1315/January–February 1909), Satishchandra Bandopadhyay (Advocate at the Allahabad High Court, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’, Jyaiṣṭha 1322/May–June 1915), Sir Pratulchandra Chattopadhyay (Judge at the Lahore Chief Court, Bibidha Prasaṅga’, Bhādra 1324/August–September 1917), Nirmalchandra Mallick (‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’, Pouṣ 1324/December–January 1917–1918), Bamandas Basu (Civil Surgeon, retired as Major and an occasional writer in Prabāsī on places he was posted in the course of his medical ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’, Pouṣ 1337/December–January 1930–1931).

47 Uttarā, edited by Atulprasad Sen and Radhakamal Mukhopadhyay, was published by the Prabāsī Baṅga Sāhitya Sammilanī based at Lucknow and printed at the Indian Press at Banaras, the same press from where Prabāsī was printed. It continued until the late 1950s and was contributed to mostly by immigrant Bengalis in north India.

48 Shanta Devi, Bhārata Mukti-sādhak, p. 138. Eminent scholars like Priyanath Sen and Abinashchandra Das praised the innovativeness of Prabāsī's cover.

49 Guha-Thakurta, T. (1992). The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, aesthetics and nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920, Cambridge University Press, p. 138Google Scholar.

50 Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka, pp. 139–140.

51 Ibid., p.138.

52 By the second decade of the twentieth century a month's Prabāsī typically averaged 125 pages.

53 Partha Bose in Preface to Shanta Devi, p. 7.

54 The Bengal Library Catalogue of Books and Periodicals (1901) translated the term ‘Prabasi’ as Sojourner.

55 Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, p. 58. According to Shanta Devi, the Indian Press opened a separate Bengali print department for Prabāsī and Sarasvatī which was probably the product of Ghosh's discussions with Chattopadhyay. Once Prabāsī moved to Calcutta, it was printed at the Kuntalīn Press.

56 Shanta Devi, Bhārat-Mukti Sādhaka, p. 137. Shanta Devi also mentions how, during the first phase of Prabāsī, her mother Manorama Devi decided to limit household expenditures to a bare minimum of Rs. 150 per month. Of this meagre amount Rs. 60–65 was spent on the children's education, an expense which the Chattopadhyays were not willing to compromise on. Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka, p. 186.

57 Rabindranath Thakur started writing for Prabāsī from around 1314 Baṅgābda, i.e. 1907, after he quit as the editor of Nabaparyāẏ Baṅgadarśana.

58 Rabindranath Thakur to Ramananda Chattopadhyay, Ciṭhi Patra vol. 12, correspondence # 52. Shanta Devi mentions that Chattopadhyay had given Rabindranath an advance of Rs. 300 for writing a serial novel for Prabāsī though the former had mentioned that there was no compulsion that Tagore had to write anything for that matter. Gorā was serialized for about two and a half years from Bhādra 1314 (August–September 1907) to Phālgun 1316 (February–March 1910). Shanta Devi mentions that Rabindranath Thakur was extremely punctual about sending the Gorā's episodes on time. Apparently he did not fail even when his minor son Samindranath died. Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka, p. 190.

59 Jībansmṝti was serialized in Prabāsī from Bhādra 1318/August–September 1911.

60 Acalāẏatan was serialized in Prabāsī from Āśvin 1318/September–October 1911.

61 Some of Rabindranath's major essays appeared in Prabāsī immediately after Gorā: Byādhi O Pratikār (Śrāvaṇ 1314), Nabayuger Uṯsab (1315), Pūrba O Paścim (1315), Sadupaẏ (1315), and Samasyā (1315).

62 Jagadananda Ray's science essays were written in very simple and unassuming languages that were at least potentially, easily accessible to all readers. The subjects of his essays ranged from the mysteries of the universe (for instance, ‘Jyotiṣka Yaṯkiñciṯ’, Kārtik, 1318/November–December 1911 to the science behind simple household things like, ‘Dadhī’ (Yogurt), Bhādra, 1318/August–September 1911.

63 For instance, Rakhaldas Bandopadhyay, ‘Bhojbarmāra Tāmraśāsan’, Śrāvaṇ, 1318/July–August 1911 and ‘Mahānābik Buddhagupta’, Āśvin 1318/September–October 1911. Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Pūrvvabaṅga’, a review of Jatindramohan Roy's Dhākār Itihās, Śrāvaṇ, 1320/July–August 1913.

64 Radhakamal Mukhopadhyay was particularly concerned with questions of rural reforms (‘Pallī Saṃskār’, Bhādra 1320/August–September 1913) and lokaśikṣā or public education (‘Lokaśikṣār Praṇālī’, Kārtik 1318/November–December, 1911). This would start a prolonged debate between him and intellectuals like Lalitkumar Chattopadhyay on public education and the role of the literati as lokaśikṣaka (public mentor).

65 Jyotirindranath Thakur translated abundantly from Maupassant and other French fiction writers and poets.

66 Dwijendranath Thakur's serialized commentary on the Gītā started in Baiśākh 1318. Though primarily a writer on philosophy and theology, he also wrote on colonial rule and modes of indigenous resistance.

67 In the course of any given year, three to five novels ran serially. This trend would be further intensified by periodicals like Bhāratvarṣa (1913) and particularly Māsik Basumatī (1922). For instance 1320/1913 (randomly chosen year) had four novels running concurrently—Abinashchandra Das's Araṇyabās, Charuchandra Bandopadhyay's Āguner Fulkī, Nirupama Devi's Didi and Sourindramohan Mukhopadhyay's Mṛtyumocan. Similarly in 1318/1911 serialized novels like Satyendranath Dutta's Janmadukhī, Prabhatkumar Mukhopadhyay's Nabīn Sannyāsī and Manilal Gangopadhyay's Bhāgyacakra ran concurrently.

68 Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p.138.

69 The 1317/1910 volume of Prabāsī carried 213 pictures and plates. ‘Prabāsīr Nijer Kathā’, Bhādra 1318/August–September 1911. From 1315/1908 three tone pictures were published regularly. At the end of every Bengali year, picture plates that appeared in that particular year's Prabāsī were compiled in a single volume called Chatterjee's Picture Album and put up for sale. Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 280.

70 In his editorial remark ‘Citra: Prabāsī-te Mudrita Citra-Nirvacanera Youktikatā’ in the Prabāsī issue of Jyaiṣṭha 1310/May–June 1903, Chattopadhyay asserted that the cost of producing Prabāsī was much higher than the costs involved in printing other contemporary journals. He argued that Prabāsī voluntarily took up the additional costs to reproduce quality photographs and paintings.

71 There existed a vibrant market for cheap pictures, printed and painted in mid and late nineteenth century Calcutta. Crude and often unclear, these pictures were produced by simple woodcuts and metal engravings and were used mainly for decorative purposes. Pictorial representations of religious and secular themes enabled complex engagement between the world of print and those on the peripheries of the print-literate societies. Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 139–151.

72 Shanta Devi, Bharat Mukti-Sādhaka, p. 115.

73 For the significance of illustrations in periodicals, see Brake, L. and Demoor, M. (2009). The Lure of Illustration in the nineteenth century: picture and press, Palgrave MacmillanCrossRefGoogle Scholar. The first coloured picture to be printed in Prabāsī was a photograph of Edward VII and his Queen Alexandria. Abanindranath's paintings ‘Sujātā O Buddha’ and ‘Bajramukut O Padmābatī’ were reproduced in monotone because multicoloured blocks of paintings were still difficult to produce in India. When Bhāratvarṣa was launched under the patronage of Dwijendralal Roy in 1913 the editor Jaladhar Sen took enough care to emulate specific features of Prabāsī—among them plates of paintings by Bhabanicharan Laha appeared regularly in the pages of Bhāratvarṣa. Similarly Māsik Basumatī found in Hemen Majumdar its counterpart to Abanindranath Thakur and Bhabanicharan Laha.

74 A few of Abanindranath's writings on arts and aesthetics include: ‘Mūrtti’, Prabāsī, Pouṣ-Māgh, 1320/December–February, 1913 and ‘Citra-Paricaẏa: Śeṣ Bojhā’, Prabāsī, Phālgun 1320/February–March 1914.

75 Abanindranath Tagore in Prabāsī, Baiśākha 1333/April–May 1926; quoted in Partha Bose, Preface to Shanta Devi.

76 In fact, Sāhitya accused Prabāsī of simply drumming up support for the new school of painters. Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 213.

77 The word ‘illustrated’ was printed in italics to emphasize the distinct nature of an illustrated periodical like Prabāsī. Though others like Sāhitya too carried a few illustrations occasionally, they were not categorized as ‘illustrated’, implying that unlike a sacitra māsik patrikā like Prabāsī illustrations were not on their routine platter.

78 Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 139.

79 Ibid, p.191. Some of the writings on art and aesthetics included: Charuchandra Bandopadhyay, ‘Citra-Paricaẏa’, Prabāsī Phālgun, 1319/February–March 1913; Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Jātīẏa Jībane Kalāśilper Gurutva’ Prabāsī Caitra 1319/March–April 1913; Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Nabyatantrer Baṅgīẏa Citrakarsampradāẏa’ Prabāsī Pouṣ 1335/December–January 1928–1929; Sister Nivedita, ‘Bharat-Mata’ (in English with a translation note by the editor) Prabāsī Bhādra 1313/August–September 1906; Sister Nivedita, ‘Notes on Pictures’ (in English with a translation note by the editor) Prabāsī Caitra 1313/March–April 1907; Sister Nivedita, ‘Nandalal Basur Satī-Citra’ Modern Review, April 1908/Translated by the Editor Prabāsī Jyaiṣṭha 1315/May–June 1908.

80 Ibid., p. 139.

81 Publisher's foreword—Chatterjee's Picture Album, no.1 cited in Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 280.

82 Ibid., pp. 138–139. In an editorial observation, ‘Citra: Prabāsī-te Mudrita Citra-Nirvacanera Youktikatā’ in the Prabāsī issue of Jyaiṣṭha 1310/May–June 1903, Ramananda Chattopadhyay replying to objections raised about reproducing European paintings emphasized the need for enhanced exposure to various kinds of high art.

83 Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, p. 8.

84 Sengupta, Achintyakumar, Kallol Yug, Calcutta 1950, p. 140Google Scholar.

85 Both Ramananda and Rabindranath were Brahmo affiliated to the Ādi Brāhma Samāj, presided over by Debendranath Tagore and subsequently Rabindranath himself. Rabindranath's Brahmacarya āśrama that later became the Viswa Bharati University was located in Bolpur in Birbhum district. Ramananda Chattopadhyay's ancestral family residence was also in Birbhum district. There are innumerable essays in Prabāsī on Birbhum's local history and archaeology, one of the most regular writers being Sibratan Mitra, one of the founder-editors of the monthly Mānasī (1909–1915).

86 Sāhitya was particularly vituperative towards Prabāsī—not only for what its editor Sureshchandra Samajpati found objectionable in Rabindranath's verses but also in reproductions of Abanindranath's paintings in the latter journal. For Samajpati, Abanindranath's paintings were stylistically ‘strange’ and his use of color ‘unnatural’. Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 213.

87 Though beyond the scope of this essay, it is perhaps worth considering that in to the early 1940s Ramananda Chattopadhyay's defense of the political position of the Hindu Mahasabha visibly comes through in his editorials in the Modern Review and Prabāsī. By this time Prabāsī had largely outgrown its cultural necessity as an arbiter of the Bengalis’ aesthetic sensibility. The political mayhem of the immediate pre-independence years, involving as it did the colonial state, various factions within the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the provincially vested Krishak Praja Party and the factions within the Bengal Provincial Congress, had made the very future of Bengal's territorial integrity and the Bengal politicians’ influence at the Centre questionable. The Hindu Mahasabha commanded a substantial support-base amongst the Bengali-Hindu middleclass populations. Whilst Chattopadhyay used his editorials to rationalize the political stance of the more Hindu-oriented factions, it might well have been Prabāsī’s commercial and strategic response to hold on to its sustained readership.

88 Circulation figures from the Bengal Library Catalogue indicate Prabāsī's popularity superseded those of other journals. In 1903 and 1904 for instance, Bhāratī's (1877) circulation was 1250 while Prabāsī's (then in its third/fourth year) stood at 2000. In 1911 the respective figures stood at 2000 and 5000. Groups of writers for each of these periodicals were not mutually exclusive. Most of them including Rabindranath Thakur wrote concurrently for several journals.

89 Discussion on the Bengal Gazette, the first Bengali literary monthly in the Ālocanā section of Prabāsī Bhādra 1325/August–Septembre 1928.

This was a long tradition that dated back to the days of the first known literary monthly in Bengal—the Bengal Gazette (1223/1816) where its editor Gangadhar Bhattacharya's writings were printed along with illustrations.

90 Observed in the ‘Māsik Sāhitya Samālocanā’ (Review of Periodical Literature) section in the monthly Sāhitya, Āṣāḍha 1312/June–July 1905.

91 Chattopadhyay took it upon himself to elucidate on every issue of public interest—on various forms of cultural productions in Bengal and problems affecting institutionalization and commercialization of Bengali literature, drama and arts; female education; the condition of the peasantry and tenancy laws; censorship laws; the War, its causes, course and impact; Gandhian philosophy, and Congress politics; the various constitutional procedures of 1909, 1919, 1927 and issues of Home Rule, diarchy and separate electorates that these were concerned with; the Government of India Act, 1935 and the question of federation; the 1937 provincial elections and worsening Hindu-Muslim relations.

92 Francesca Orsini has also argued that the War was the major turning point as far as an increasing interest in news was concerned. Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 63–66.

93 Orsini, The Hindi public Sphere, p. 66.

94 For interconnections between journalism and literature, see Campbell, K. (2000). Journalism, Literature and Modernity: From Hazlitt to Modernism, Edinburgh University PressGoogle Scholar.

95 Letter to Ramananda Chattopadhyay from Jadunath Sarkar (Dated 29 May 1925, Darjeeling), Correspondence with Jadunath Sarkar, Ramananda Chattopadhyay Correspondence RC 54/5.

96 Ramananda Chattopadhyay in fact came to be considered as an authority even in international journal circles. One of his articles was listed amongst the best in all American magazines. Correspondence (dated 3 August 1939) of Ramananda Chattopadhyay from Richard J Walsh, editor, Asia.

97 From the Simla Bangiya Sammilani (Dated 7 April 1941), Ramananda Chattopadhyay Correspondence RC 46.

98 Ramananda Chattopadhyay to Nalinikumar Bhadra quoted in Shanta Devi, p. 115. As many as three consecutive issues could be devoted to discussions on a particular theme. This process of exchange between authors and their readers and amongst readers took place within an expanding and commercializing market for periodical literature. As a result these essays and their discussions brought to the fore the crucial issues at stake for Bengali cultural and national sensibility.

99 ‘Betālera Baiṭhaka’ in Prabāsī Baiśākha 1328/April–May 1921. About Betālera Baiṭhaka, the editor remarked: ‘It must be remembered that Betālera Baiṭhaka is not intended to substitute for the encyclopedia or the Viśvakoṣa—that is beyond the scope of monthlies. Rather the idea is that queries should be of the nature that common people could benefit from’. Betālera Baiṭhaka was planned as a questionnaire feature where readers were required to send in their responses to questions published every month—the intention purportedly being to enable thinking faculty and to whip up sharper questioning.

100 Instances of a few questions posted in Betālera Baiṭhaka: 1. what are the differences between a novel and a play? 2. On remedies for controlling water bred plant Gedua that spoilt paddy crops. Betālera Baiṭhaka was started in the Pouṣa 1321/December–January 1914–1915 number of Prabāsī. The Māgha 1321/January–February 1915 Betālera Baiṭhaka for instance presented the following question: ‘List the ten best short stories by Rabindranath’. An add-on note to the question stated the following criterion: ‘In answering this question one would need to consider the few stories appearing in Sabuja Patra, the five parts of Galpaguccha (A Bunch of Stories) and the selection entitled Galpa Cāriti (The Four Stories)’. What is significant here is the effort by an established miscellany like Prabāsī in orienting readers’ attention to the newly launched Sabuja Patra (1914), thereby subtly prodding the reader towards literature deemed to be aesthetically enriching. This survey-question does hint at the proximity of the Prabāsī editor with Rabindranath. It also points to the increasing importance attached to short stories.

101 For instance the Jyaiṣṭha 1320 Prabāsī Kaṣṭipāthar section contained selections from the Baiśākh 1320 Tattvabodhinī Patrikā (Kshitimohan Sen's essay Tīrthayātrā) and Baiśākh 1320 Bhāratī (Abanindranath Tagore's short story Yugmatārā).

102 Selections were taken from The Fortnightly Review, The Literary Digest, East and West, The Survey, Current Opinion, Chicago Tribune, Sun, Outlook, Hibbert Journal, La Croix, Les Documents du Progress, Japan Magazine etc. Pañcaśasya also contained reviews and translated excerpts from foreign books. The Āṣāḍha 1320 issue for instance contained reviews of books like W.E. Hardenberg's The Putumayo: the Devil's Paradise published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1912 and Woodrow Wilson's The New Freedom published by Chapman Hall in 1913.

103 This indicates the tensed literary agenda of the Bengali intelligentsia, caught up as they were between their self-inflicted pedagogic role as social and moral arbiters and the burdens placed on their agenda by the felt need to enhance participation within the literary sphere and thus make the pāṭhak samāj more representative of the imagined nation.

104 West III, James. (2002). ‘The Magazine Market’ in Finkelstein, D. and McCleery, A.The Book History Reader, Routledge, London and New YorkGoogle Scholar.

105 Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga—Nūtan Prabāsī’ in Prabāsī, Baiśākh 1328/April–May 1921.

106 Basu, S. (2004). Does Class Matter? Colonial Capital and Workers’ Resistance in Bengal, 1890–1937, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar. Chapter 5 provides a comprehensive account of the economic hardships of the post war years and how they helped to create an ambience where protest mentality could thrive.

107 Ibid, p. 150. Basu shows that over the War years, i.e. 1914–1918, prices had increased by about 70 per cent but wages had risen by a meagre 15 per cent. Prices of necessities such as sugar had risen from Rs. 8–9 per maund to Rs. 30–35 per maund. Price rises and their effect on shoestring middle class budgets were widely reported and discussed in the pages of Prabāsī. The immediate post war years were hit hard by what came to be known as the ‘cloth famine’ throughout the province and the outbreak of an influenza epidemic in Calcutta. Basu, pp. 151–152.

108 Ibid.

109 The condition of the madhyabitta deteriorated so much that the Ramakrishna Mission in Barisal, East Bengal embarked upon a fundraising drive to redress the problem. ‘Deśera Kathā’ in Prabāsī Jyaiṣṭha 1327/May–June 1920.

110 The dependence on rural rent income of the urban middle income groups engaged in the professions or some form of trade, the decline in rent income and the consequent socio-economic stratification of the maddhyabitta. Chatterjee, P. (1984). Bengal: 1920–1947: the land question, Calcutta: KP BagchibGoogle Scholar; Bose, S. (1993). Peasant Labor and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770, Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGuire, J. (1983). The Making of a Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885, Australian National UniversityGoogle Scholar.

111 Cadastral Survey of Faridpur District in Jatindramohan Sinha, ‘Bāṅgālīr Anna Samasyā’ in Prabāsī Jyaiṣṭha 1337/May–June 1930.

112 Price of Prabāsī taken from the Bengal Library Catalogue of Books and Periodicals, First Quarter ending 31 March 1904. Even during this time the going was not quite smooth. In 1905 the price of one maund of ordinary rice was more than Rs. 3. From ‘Annual Average Retail Prices in Bengal for North and East Bengal’ (Statistical Committee's Report) quoted in Kaliprasanna Bandopadhyay, ‘Sekāler Bājār Dar’ (Market Rates in those days) in Prabāsī Śrāvaṇa 1328/July–August 1921.

113 Bengal Library Catalogues of Books for the First Quarter ending 31 March 1904 and Bibidha Prasaṅga—‘Nutan Prabāsī’, Prabāsī Baiśākh 1328.

114 Bibidha Prasaṅga—‘Nutan Prabāsī’. Prabāsī's volume had been expanding steadily with more regular features, fictions and poems. By 1910 a year's Prabāsī contained over 1,230 pages. ‘Prabāsīr Nijer Kathā’ Bhādra 1318/August–September 1911. In fact the large size of these miscellanies earned them the epithet of ‘ḍhāush’ (literally meaning big and clumsy).

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid. Chattopadhyay stated that the literary scene in Bengal was very different to that of the West where the major expenditure of the magazines went towards the fees of writers. In the United States a high-brow magazine like the Smart Set that addressed a limited and sophisticated readership was amongst the lowest paying ones as far as authors were concerned. Typically a short story there would fetch a writer somewhere between $100–$400. Magazines like the Saturday Evening Post were more remunerative. Writers like Booth Tarkington earned $4,000 per story by 1939. James L. W. West III, ‘The Magazine Market’.

117 ‘Prabāsīr Nijer Kathā’, Bhādra 1318/July–August 1911.

118 Ibid. It is interesting that Chattopadhyay explains in terms of volume or quantity while comparing an issue of Prabāsī with a book. Evidently, increasing commercialization of print transformed literature (a book or a periodical) in to a commodity, its monetary value being weighed directly vis-à-vis the quantity on offer.

119 ‘Nutan Prabāsī’.

120 For instance, the regular section Deśera Kathā or News of the Nation was now extended to Deśbideśera Kathā (Country and World News) to accommodate the growing needs of the post-war climate. As to why Deśer Kathā was no longer sufficient (and hence contributing towards an enhanced volume and increased price) Ramananda Chattopadhyay wrote: ‘The consequences of the War are not yet over. . .it is clear that the fate of every country and continent are allied to each other. . .Even countries like India where there has been no enemy intrusions, are besieged by inflation, food shortage and hunger, epidemics etc. we need to know in what ways can we learn from the good happening to others and why in today's world there isn't any peace. On the whole it is no longer enough to simply know about Bengal. . .’ Bibidha Prasaṅga—‘Prabāsīr Kalebar Bṛddhi’ Prabāsī Baiśākha 1328.

121 Pāttāri literally meaning palm leaves used instead of paper for writing on in village schools.

122 Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga—Nūtan Prabāsī’ in Prabāsī Baiśākh 1328/April–May 1921.

123 Mitra, S. (2009). ‘The Limits of Aesthetic License: What could women read and write on?’ in The Literary Public Sphere in Bengal: Aesthetics, Culture and Politics, 1905–1939, Unpublished Dissertation, Syracuse University, New YorkGoogle Scholar investigates how periodicals tried to create a distinct female reading constituency.

124 Dickens's Pickwick Papers supposedly had generated an unprecedented circulation of 40,000 in 1836. See Hughes, L. and Lund, M. ‘Textual/Sexual Pleasure and Serial Publication’ in Jordan, J. and Patten, R. (1995). Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth Century British Publishing and Reading Practices, Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar. Works of these authors attracted a sizeable reading audience in colonial markets. Priya Joshi, ‘The Circulation of Fiction in Indian Libraries, circa 1835–1901’ in In Another Country, pp. 35–92.

125 During the first Quarter of 1911, Prabāsī registered a circulation of 4,000 and by the middle of that year Chattopadhyay added that Prabāsī was printing 5,000 copies of each issue. In fact at the time Prabāsī was the largest selling monthly in Bengali that far outdid its contemporaries like Bhāratī (1600), Nabyabhārat (1500), Sāhitya (1000), Mānasī (750) and Baṅgadarśana (800).

126 Robin Jeffrey's identification of three stages of print consumption in Kerala is a useful means to understand periodical readership in colonial Bengal. The mid nineteenth century decades broadly conform to what Jeffrey in his study of the newspaper press in Kerala has called the ‘scarce’ stage when periodicals and newspapers are published regularly and from a number of outlets. In this stage Jeffrey argues that newspaper production assumes what Habermas has called the ‘small handicraft business’. In fact this is exactly how Shanta Devi described the early phase of Prabāsī's publications in the closing years of the nineteenth century—as a small cottage industry. See Jeffrey, R. (2009). Testing Concepts about Print, Newspapers and Politics: Kerala, India, 1800–2009, Journal of Asian Studies, 68: 2, pp. 465–489CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 In his 1859 survey of the book trade in the Bengal Presidency, Reverend James Long estimated that approximately 600,000 copies of various Bengali books reached almost six million people, the majority of whom were listeners rather than readers. During the first decade of the twentieth century novels and religious works commanded the highest number of book publication titles compared with other more specialized categories like History or Science. Even as late as 1922, for instance, fiction as a category commanded the largest publication—237 fiction books were printed in this year out of a total number of 1,564 book titles. Bengal Library Catalogue for the year 1922. Ghosh, A. (2002). Revisiting the ‘Bengal Renaissance’: Literary Bengali and Low-Life Print in Colonial Calcutta, Economic and Political Weekly, 37:42, pp. 4329–4343Google Scholar.

128 The Census considered literate only those able to read and write a full letter. Nagendrachandra Dasgupta, ‘Bāṅglār Janatattva’ in Prabāsī, Kārtik 1330/November–December 1923. According to the 1921 Census average literacy in Bengal was only 104 per 1,000.

129 Roy, T. (1996). ‘Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance of Bengali Literature’ in Chatterjee, P.Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal, Calcutta: SamyaGoogle Scholar; Metcalf, B. (1990). Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar, University of California PressGoogle Scholar; Naregal, V. (2001). Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere: Western India Under Colonialism, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; Ghosh, A. (2006). Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, OUPGoogle Scholar. Pollock, S. (2003), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, University of California PressGoogle Scholar.

130 According to the literacy statistics provided by the 1931 Census, only a meagre 79 out of every 1,000 Hindu adults aged 24 years and above had some form of primary education. The corresponding figure for Muslims in Bengal was 40 out of every 1,000. Similarly, ratios of vernacular literates and literates in English showed a considerable hiatus for both Hindu and Muslim males and females. Bengali-Hindu male literacy (for ages above five years) stood at 217 per 1,000 (1901), 238 per 1,000 (1911), 268 per 1,000 (1921) and 259 per 1,000 (1931). Corresponding English literacy for the same social group was 50 and 68 per 1,000 for 1921 and 1931 respectively. The 1931 Census for the first time categorized ‘Authors, Editors, Journalists and Photographers’ as a distinct sub-category occupation under the broader category of ‘Letters, Arts and Sciences’. The statistics for sub-category of Authors etc. was put at a mere 274 males and 6 females for the year 1931.

131 Ghosh, ‘Revisiting the Bengal Renaissance’ argues that the practice of reading texts aloud and staging of plays considerably stretched the boundaries of consumption beyond the literate audiences.

132 Mukhopadhyay, A. (2004). Early Bengali Serials, 1818–1950: A Shared database of Library Holdings Worldwide, Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, pp. 397–399Google Scholar.

133 The relationship between print-literacy, forms of oral transmission of literary texts and periodical consumption is an uncertain and ambiguous one. For instance, while fiction and poems could be read most appropriately in the solitude of private reading, a section like Pañcaśasya that appeared regularly in Prabāsī was perhaps more amenable to collective reading.

134 This was precisely the space where, according to Tagore, Baṅgadarśan's intervention proved to be momentous, i.e., in mature vernacular adaptation of modern Western literary genres that enabled connection with a majority of the middle income groups who were mostly educated in the vernacular.

135 Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga: Bāṅglā Māsik Dīrghajībi Hoẏnā keno?’ Prabāsī, Kārtik 1324/October–November 1917.

136 Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga: Bāṅglā Sāhitya O Sarvasādhāraner Śikṣā’ in Prabāsī Phālgun 1321/February–March 1917. Aparna Basu has shown how the commercialization of cash crops like jute made certain groups within the cultivating communities affluent enough to send their sons to schools. Basu, A. (1970). The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898–1920, OUP, pp. 114–115Google Scholar.

137 In reality however such notional foreclosures proved ineffectual. Periodicals lent themselves as much to practices of shared readings as they did to individual reading within the privacy of domestic leisure.

138 Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’ in Prabāsī, Pouṣ 1321/December–January 1914–1915.

139 Rabindranath Thakur, ‘Sāhitya Sammelan’ in Baṅgadarśana (Nabaparyāẏ), Phālgun 1314/January–February 1907, initially read at a literary conference organized at Kasimbazar. Here Rabindranath spoke of mānasik sāmājikatā or mental sociability shaped by sāhitya or literature. Emphasizing the social functions of literature, Rabindranath argued that the term sāhitya was particularly germane because it embraced the word sahit, literally meaning togetherness.

140 As a social group, the educated middleclass in colonial Bengal howsoever diverse and stratified was only a miniscule part of the entire indigenous population. Even as late as 1931, the proportion of the population engaged in the ‘Professions and Liberal Arts’ was 55 per 1,000. 1931 Census: Volume V Bengal and Sikkim.

141 See Kaviraj, S. (2003). ‘Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal’ in Pollock, S. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, pp. 503–566. Kaviraj speaks of the Bengali literary modern as the moment of transition from the communal and performative to a more individualized literary practice.

142 Even as late as 1921 literacy rates were highest amongst the three upper castes in Bengal—the Brahmins (486 per 1,000), Kayasthas (413 per 1,000) and Baidyas (662 per 1,000). 1921 Census extracts in Prabāsī, Jyaiṣṭha 1332/May–June 1925. During the years 1916–1917, only 1.3 per cent of Bengal's entire female population was educated. Ramananda Chattopadhyay, ‘Bibidha Prasaṅga’ in Prabāsī, Baiśākh 1326/April–May 1919. By the war years regular and quality writers were not necessarily all financially solvent. As Achintyakumar Sengupta recollects in his reminiscences of the Kallol Yuga most of the young writers, including eminent poets and novelists like Kazi Nazrul Islam and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, had difficult times making both ends meet.

143 Jaladhar Sen in his introduction to Bhāratvarṣa identified the middle class and students as the primary patrons of periodical literature (māsik sāhitya). Jaladhar Sen, Sūcanā (Introduction) Bhāratvarṣa, Year I, no. 1, Āṣāḍha 1320/June–July 1913.

144 Descriptions of domestic space and its aestheticization, women's fashions, their codes of behaviour, jewellry designs and hair styles in novels written by women authors like Shanta Devi and Sita Devi and serialized in Prabāsī provide a peek in to the kinds of lifestyles likely to be familiar with both the periodical's readers and the authors themselves.

145 Ramananda Chattopadhyay was well aware of the economic plight of the lesser middle classes, mostly engaged in clerical professions in government and commercial establishments or as school teachers, especially during the First World War.

146 Veena Naregal, Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere, has shown how the colonial education system created linguistic hierarchies and how the trajectories of vernacular education and its accessibility to various indigenous social groups emerged as an intensely politicized processes.

147 ‘Baṅgasāhityer śreṣṭha anubād bā anusaraṇ grantha’ (The Best Translated or Rendered Books in Bengali Literature) in Betāler Baiṭhak, Prabāsī, Baiśākh 1322/April–May 1915. The Phālguna 1321/February–March 1915 Betālera Baiṭhaka had already brought out a long list of mostly foreign literature which Bengali readers felt worthy of translation (of course to make them known to a wider audience). Jyotirindranath Thakur started a serialized translation of Antoine Rous marquis de La Mazeliére's Essai sur l'évolution de la civilization indienne published in Paris in 1903. His Bengali translation started in Prabāsī in Baiśākh 1318/April–May 1911 and appeared in two sequences, ‘Prācīn Bhārater Sabhyatā’ and ‘Madhyayuge Bhāratīẏa Sabhyatā’. Besides, Tagore Dinendranath Tagore also translated European short stories for the Bengali reader. His translation of Ivan Turgenieuff's The Song of Triumphant Love (English rendering of the original Russian) appeared in Prabāsī in Bhādra 1318/July–August 1911 entitled ‘Premer Jaẏjaẏantī’.

148 Joshi, P. (2008). ‘Reading in the Public Eye: The Circulation of British Fiction in Indian Libraries’ in Blackburn, S. and Dalmia, V.India's Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar. During the late nineteenth century decades the general pattern of public reading remained overwhelmingly gendered with very few women securing the education or the freedom to access public libraries. Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 154–161.

149 Priya Joshi, In Another Country. The social profile of readers consuming English fiction that Joshi identifies was obviously distinct from those whose literary preferences were met by Baṭtalā publications.

150 The 1905 list of the more important public Libraries in India enumerates 96 libraries in Bengal (of which 22 were located in and around Calcutta), 10 in Bombay and 44 in Madras. A more exhaustive list compiled in 1907 listed 139 public libraries in Bengal (including Orissa, Chota Nagpur, Bhagalpur and Patna Divisions). Private Libraries including collections of individuals or families like those of the Pathuriaghata Thakurs, Asutosh Mukherjee, Dr Mahendralal Sarkar, Radhakanta Deb and Isvarchandra Vidyasagar were listed separately.

151 Periodical holdings at the libraries of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Uttarpara Library and Bagbazar Public Library for instance are extensive. This archive has been enlarged over decades through institutional subscriptions of these periodicals.

152 Baṅgīẏa Sāhitya Pariṣada Kāryyabibaranī or the Proceedings of the Baṅgīẏa Sāhitya Pariṣada (Year 8, 1900, p. 19) stated the importance of and the need to create an extensive archive of vernacular literary periodicals: ‘Periodicals are the live history of a vernacular's development (kramonnati). The Pariṣada library must house all kinds of vernacular periodicals, current and extinct, new and old. . . .During the course of the year under consideration, the Pariṣada has paid special attention to the collection of sāmaẏika patra’.

153 The number of libraries and reading rooms in Calcutta increased from 49 in 1886 to 137 in 1901. Joshi, ‘Reading in the Public Eye’, p. 293.

154 Price, K. and Smith, S. (1995). Periodical Literature in Nineteenth Century America, University of Virginia Press, pp. 1–16Google Scholar.

155 From about the last decades of the nineteenth century, women from middleclass and richer families were increasingly encouraged by their families to spend their free time in constructive ways that included reading, embroidery, knitting and music. These new trainings constituted important ways towards creating the new gentlewoman, the bhadramahilā.

156 Rabindranath Thakur, Jībansmṝti, Viswabharati Granthabibhag, Reprint 1411/2004, p. 71. Even the nineteenth century poet Nabinchandra Sen in his memoir Āmār Jīban wrote that during his childhood, i.e. 1850s and 1860s, there were very few texts worth attentive reading.

157 Rabindranath Thakur, Chelebelā, Bhadra 1347/August–September 1940, Parts 12 and 13.

158 Kundanandini and Suryamukhi were the major female protagonists in Bankimchandra's first serial novel in Baṅgadarśana, Viṣavṝkṣa serialized in 1279/1872.

159 Rabindranath Tagore, Chelebelā, Bhadra 1347/August–September 1940, Parts 12 and 13.

160 The shift in emphasis in the social reform agenda is noticeable since the Age of Consent Debate (1891). The shift now seems to have been conceived from the domain of the colonial legislature to a different kind of domain which is also public but which focused on the cultivation and reform of the self.

161 Mudrā-rākṣasa (the Print Monster), a short description of a novel ‘Satīlakṣmī’ by Bidhubhusan Basu in ‘Prāpta Pustakera Saṃkṣipta Paricaẏa’ (Brief Review of Books Received) Section, Prabāsī, Baiśākha 1316/April–May 1909.

162 The disparity and the distance between these two literary worlds can be sensed from the works of Chaudhuri, R. (2002) Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal, which deals with English writings of mid-nineteenth century bilingual Bengali elite and Ghosh, Power in Print that studies the other end of the spectrum, the lower stratum literates whose literacy diverged widely from vernacular literacy to total non-literacy. Rabindranath Tagore's letter to Dineshchandra Sen dated Agrahāẏaṇ 1312/November–December 1905, Ciṭhipatra, volume 10, no. 32, p. 31. Tagore wrote, ‘. . .Bankim's Baṅgadarśan nourished Bengali literature in modern ways and inspired the educated to use our mother-language (mātṝ-bhāṣā). . .’.

163 Neither Purnasashi Devi nor Jyotirmoyee Devi mention any vigilance vis-à-vis reading periodicals that their respective families subscribed to. Purnasashi Devi, ‘Smṝtikathā’ in Bandopadhyay, A. and Sen, A. Pūrṇaśaśī Devīr Nirbācita Racanā, pp. 230–231. Jyotirmoyee Devi recollects how as a young girl she helped her uncle organize the family's library. While books were simply numbered and shelved without classification of any kind, the sāhitya patrikā were sorted and set aside for binding. She mentions that she had to tear off the advertisement pages from Bhāratī, Prabāsī and Baṅgadarśana and organize them consecutively before sending them off for binding. Jyotirmoyee Devi, Smṝti Bismṝtir Taraṅge, pp. 29–30.

164 Chatterjee, P. The Nation and Its Fragments, p. 10.

165 Ibid, pp. 147–149.

166 Rabindranath wrote on the impact of Baṅgadarśana, ‘. . .That day we fled from the control of schools and foreign teachers and turned to our homes. . .’ Rabindranath Tagore on the newly initiated journal Aitihāsik Citra in ‘Prasaṅga Kathā’ Bhāratī, Bhādra 1305/August–September 1898.

167 Chatterjee, P. ‘The Nation and Its Women’ in Nation and Its Fragments, pp. 116–134; Sarkar, T. (2001). Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism, Permanent BlackGoogle Scholar; and Sarkar, T. (1993). Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child Wife, Economic and Political Weekly, 28:36, pp. 1869–1878Google Scholar; Sinha, M. (1995). Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar; Chowdhury, I. (2001). The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar; Sarkar, S. and Sarkar, T. (2008). Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader, Indiana University PressGoogle Scholar.