Abstract
Indian Bengali author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay presents an excellent example of genre blending tendencies of postcolonial science fiction. Mukhopadhyay’s juvenile fiction mostly plays with the realm of the fantastic: ghost stories, science fiction, or a blending of both genres. Mukhopadhyay’s blending of the scientific and the supernatural realms in his stories represents a larger trend in Bengali science fiction in particular, and Indian science fiction in general, that repeatedly works as a device of subversion of hegemonic western notions of science and reality. Mukhopadhyay deliberately places the ideas of modernity and progress in contrast to the rapidly vanishing traditions and narratives of rural and small-town values. This chapter argues that Mukhopadhyay’s blending of the natural and the supernatural simultaneously represents the flux resulting from modernization of traditional Bengali society and the hybrid identities it creates. Mukhopadhyay’s stories highlight alternative and subaltern concepts of knowledge, which in Spivak’s terms are subjected to “epistemic violence” not only by western ideas of knowledge but also by indigenous elitist epistemology. The presence of aliens, gadgets, and ghosts within the same universe without any epistemic ruptures presents readers with a unique narrative space conducive to explorations of postcolonial Bengali identity.
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Notes
- 1.
Some portions of this chapter were previously published as part of my book Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity (2020) published by University of Wales Press and are being reprinted here with their permission.
- 2.
His sf Bonny (1990) was translated as No Child’s Play (trans. Bhaskar Chattopadhyay, HarperCollins, 2013) and his ghost story Gosain Baganer Bhut was translated as The Ghost of Gosain Bagan (trans. Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Ponytale Books, 2008).
- 3.
Sf written in Bangla language and works that reflect the culture of “Bengal,” an ethno-linguistic and geopolitical region, that comprises the eastern Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the country of Bangladesh, where Bangla is the dominant language. This area was part of the Bengal Province of British India. I use “Bangla” to designate the language as per native custom, use “Bengal” to indicate the geographical region, and “Bengali” as an adjective for cultural identity.
- 4.
See my article “Melodrama, Mimicry, and Menace: Reinventing Hollywood in Indian Science Fiction Films” (2014) article for a discussion of this topic.
- 5.
For a brief but insightful overview of the history of Indian science, specifically of its revisionist nature, see Phalkey 2013. For more detailed discussion on the state of science in India in context of indigenous science and knowledge systems, see Narlikar 2003 and Dharampal 1971. Also see Ray 1902 for a discussion of indigenous practices related to chemistry from ancient to sixteenth-century India. Ganeri 2013 provides a concise comparison between the Indian epistemic cultures and the western notion of science.
- 6.
See Shiva 1992 for a discussion on this topic.
- 7.
- 8.
See Harder 2001 and also Sengupta 2010. Colonial education further provided incidental benefits of this “epistemic violence” to the local elites. Being on the vanguard of the colonial education and reformation system, the educated Bengali elite produced several internationally renowned twentieth-century scientists such as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Sattyen Bose, Meghnad Saha, and Prafulla Chandra Roy, and Kolkata (then Calcutta) as well as Chennai (then Madras) played major roles in the Nobel winning physicist C. V. Raman’s career.
- 9.
See Tauber 2018 and Harder 2001. Such ideological slant is also present in P. C. Ray’s effort at recovering suppressed knowledge in A History of Hindu Chemistry (Ray 1902). In this voluminous work, Ray starts his exploration of Hindu chemistry from the alchemic ideas found in Rigveda and knowledge of plant-based medicine in Atharvaveda, before going into Charaka and Shusruta’s medicinal knowledge and later metallurgical practices.
- 10.
- 11.
Mukherjee 2020 provides an intriguing discussion on the relationship between science and sf in India between the 1940s and the 1970s.
- 12.
In The Scientific Edge, eminent astrophysicist Narlikar gives a scathing criticism of this type of claim, while highlighting the evidentially proven ancient scientific achievements.
- 13.
- 14.
Formulated in “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination” (Clarke 1973).
- 15.
See Banerjee 2020.
- 16.
A sect of Hinduism that practices Tantra form of worship. In our context, Tantric refers to the Shaiva and Shakta Tantra traditions that worship Lord Shiva in various forms and Goddess Kali among several other Shakti goddesses. In many instances Tantric tradition is seen as different from Vedic tradition, with which Vaishnavism, the other sect mentioned in this story, is more closely associated. For more, see Flood 2006 and Gray 2016.
- 17.
All translations from the original Bengali are mine.
- 18.
Patalghar (2003), a film based on the book, further complicates matters by turning the Bengali scientist Aghor almost into a Vedic sage who works with ancient sounds to put creatures to sleep.
- 19.
The name “Aghor” refers to Lord Shiva, one of the three principal deities of Hinduism.
- 20.
Interestingly, “Bhutnath” also means Lord Shiva.
- 21.
Notice that all three stories play with the word “bhut” (“bhuture,” “Bhutnath,” “Bhutu,” “Garh-bhutua”), which in Bengali means “ghost” as well as “the past.” This play is another indication that in this universe, the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural (and maybe the past and the present) are only tenuous.
- 22.
In Hindu culture, the bull is the vehicle of Lord Shiva. Thus, stray bulls in India enjoy a certain privilege—being considered sacred they are often fed by people and roam around undeterred, often assaulting people and other animals. Notice that in Patalghar Subuddhi was chased by a bull after he stared at apaya Gobindo.
- 23.
The medieval period in Indian history, according to various historians, spans from the sixth to the sixteenth century CE. See Stein and Arnold 2010.
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Banerjee, S. (2021). Ghosts, Aliens, and Machines: Epistemic Continuity and Assemblage in Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s Science Fiction. In: Campbell, I. (eds) Science Fiction in Translation. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84208-6_13
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