Documenting the past

The Tagores and the Rays have always evoked interest, the two premier families of Bengal having spawned multiple luminaries over the decades. Think Rabindranath Tagore and the Gitanjali and soul lifting songs of the Bengali bard spring to mind. Likewise, for most of us, Sukumar Ray will always be associated with the nonsense rhymes of Abol-tabol while his son Satyajit will be synonymous with the Apu trilogy of films and his path breaking forays into the areas of illustration and fonts. But there was a wealth of fascinating family history before these popular figures made their way into public consciousness and Chandak Sengoopta enlightens us about this in his exhaustive work, The Rays before Satyajit: Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India. Spanning many generations and embracing a wide sweep of events that occurred around the time the first stirrings of the swadeshi movement were being felt and much before, the book etches an intricate picture of a crucial period in the nation’s history.

A lengthy introduction gives a detailed synopsis of the book’s contents and cast of characters; the definition of modernity with its multiplicity of meanings makes for a memorable passage. Firmly debunking the historian’s view of Indian modernity being “western wisdom poured into an oriental void”, Sengoopta dives into the heart of Bengal’s checkered history.

Thus, we are privy to the information that the Rays were Kayastha Bengalis who belonged to the scribal community of administrators, clerks and judicial officials. An interesting snippet of information is carried here about how traditional portraits of “Muslim tyranny” tend to overlook the fact that Hindu Kayastha employees adept in both Persian and Sanskrit were very happy to serve the Mughals, often attired in Persianised attire. Sengoopta dwells on the oddity of the Ray family who sidestepped the three most popular professions of the time (law, engineering and medicine), opting to follow off-beat occupations instead.

We are informed that the Rays were originally Debs but received the honorific title of Ray from the Muslim notables. Along with densely informative passages about prominent figures like Brajaram, Lokenath and Kalinath (Sukumar Ray’s grandfather) and Saradaranjan Ray (the father of Bengali cricket) we learn how sports blossomed in Bengal in retaliation to the colonists’ disdainful opinion of the Bengali gentleman as being intellectually endowed but physically weak and effete.

The family history begins with Harikishore Ray, a member of the new landed gentry adopting Kamadaranjan Ray, the five year old son of a cousin, and renaming him Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (1863-1915). The volume zeroes in on the multi-faceted figure of Upendrakishore, taking a tertiary route to dwell on Dwarkanath Ganguli — a remarkable Brahmo crusader and Upendrakishore’s father-in-law — who worked tirelessly for women’s emancipation.

A man of astonishing talents, Upendrakishore is described as a passionate musician, a technological genius, a photography enthusiast and a pioneer in half-tone technology and photomechanical innovations. An illustrator and children’s fiction writer blessed with a distinctive style of writing, Upendrakishore in 1913 founded the immensely popular children’s magazine Sandesh. Over the decades, various family members would find themselves involved in some capacity or the other in the regular publishing of the iconic magazine.

The lives of Dwarkanath and the woman he married, Kadambini Basu, entwine constantly and the figure of Kadambini stands out by sheer merit of her personal achievements.

The first of two women graduates of Calcutta, the first Indian woman medical practitioner, the first woman lecturer at an Indian medical school and the first Bengali to visit England entirely alone Kadambini’s incredible story in this volume climaxes with her supervising the birth of Sukumar and Suprabha Ray’s baby, who would grow up to be the famous Satyajit Ray.

There is a marked thrust in focusing on extraordinary women of the times and Satyajit Ray’s mother, widowed early, is described as a woman of sterling qualities. Combining creativity with domesticity with a rare skill, Suprabha took up a job (unheard of in those days), tutored her son at home and being a talented singer, sang songs composed by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, a family friend, we are informed, took immense pleasure in teaching Suprabha his new songs.

The rise of the Brahmo movement, its core philosophy, its merits and drawbacks are analysed extensively, along with the eventual breaking up of the sect and the forming of splinter groups.

An entire section of the book is devoted to the discovery of a native tea plant in Assam, the subsequent rise of tea plantations, the procuring of labour from nearby places and the atrocities committed by the tea planters on the bonded labourers, facts frequently swept under the carpet by historians. One reads with horror how the tea garden coolies were often punished brutally and how one of every four labourer died, their deaths being dismissed by the tea planters as being caused by disease or failure to adjust to climatic conditions. Dwarkanath is remembered as a figure who took a strong stand against such malpractices.

The technical details of halftone printing and the revolutionary methods devised by Upendrakishore, all of which was destined to change the look of magazines, photographs and print, are intricately covered. It is fascinating to note how the inborn love for print technology, fonts, writing, illustrations and children’s fiction kept popping up in every generation of the Rays.

Satyajit Ray’s growing up years are touched upon fleetingly in a book that is dominated almost entirely by his father, grandfather, grand uncles and his neonatal doctor.

Meticulous research has gone into putting this vast work of writing together, the book positively creaks under the weight of historical information. What could have been a mind bogglingly intricate mesh of familial relationships comes across as effortlessly comprehensive under Sengoopta’s competent penmanship.

A bulk of the volume is reserved for notes at the end of every couple of chapters and though these may frequently break the fluid flow of reading, they make for fascinating reading in themselves. Perceiving the same event from different angles (the recurrent mention of the birth of Satyajit Ray under the supervision of Kadambini being a case in point) could be a bit repetitive but by and large the book comes across as nearly flawless.

The sepia book jacket featuring priceless portraits (designer Pinaki De at his best) is underplayed and captures the zeitgeist of a bygone era perfectly; the picture of a young Satyajit with his mother Suprabha is particularly endearing.

Enlivened by constant social, political and religious commentary and packed with the details of technological evolution in the fields of printing and photography, the book stands out with its impartial and non-judgmental approach. No luminary or ideology is exalted enough to be above a spot of criticism (the social work done by the Brahmos was immense, writes Sengoopta, and yet they could frequently descend into “narrow-minded puritanism”). Such lack of blind adulation on the part of the writer for his celebrated subjects is rare and refreshing. Not just for cinephiles, bibliophiles, history buffs, followers of early feminism or the technologically inclined, The Rays before Satyajit offers an immensely enriching read for every kind of reader. A valuable and scholarly record of Bengal’s awakening, the book is a must-have for every book shelf.

Kankana Basu is a Mumbai-based writer. Her published works of fiction include a collection of short stories, Vinegar Sunday, and a novel, Cappuccino Dusk.