Kathashilpa (literally, the Art of the Word), of 19, Shyamacharan De Street, Calcutta 700073 (now Kolkata) was founded in 1959 by Abani Ranjan Ray (1932–2008) and friends like Indranath Majumdar. It became a rendezvous of radical intellectuals and artists of Calcutta, including those with extreme left sympathies. It stayed alive for more than thirty years and published a number of books that would later become classics in their respective fields.
Contents
Left ideology, drama and folk art
Abani Ranan Ray originally hailed from the Bankura district of West Bengal. Till 1952, he had been associated with the Bombay (now Mumbai) unit of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), where he was very close to stalwarts like the linocut artist Chittaprasad Bhattacharya (1915–1978). In 1952 he came to Calcutta. In the 1950s West Bengal was going through a ferment. The ban on the Communist Party of India had been lifted and it had fared well in the general elections of 1952. Shortly after, the Food Movement electrified the political atmosphere. With his IPTA background, Abani Ranjan Ray himself had pronouncedly left leanings. His close associates were mostly non-party left intellectuals such as Khaled Choudhury. The Kathashilpa logo was designed by Khaled Choudhury, arguably the last among the living legends of Bengali culture. Kathashilpa was not just a publishing endeavour. It was a creative hub for various cultural activities, including drama and folk music. Several folk-singers and folk-specialists were close to it. Ranen Ray Chowdhury (who sang in a number of Ritwik Ghatak films), Kali Dasgupta, a well-known folk-singer and collector, Khaled Choudhury, and the folk- and mass-singer Hemanga Biswas (whose centenary will be celebrated in 2012) were very close to Kathashilpa. Montu da, along with Ranajit Singha (a notable poet, folk-song enthusiast and photographer) and Nihar Barua (renowned folk singer), was associated with the Folk Music and Folklore Research Institute. The first and only journal of the institute, published by Kathashilpa, is now a collector's item. Among drama personalities, Tapas Sen (the lighting wizard of the stage), Subrata Nandi and Asit Basu were regular inmates of Kathashilpa, not to mention Sunil Kumar Chattopadhyay, the eminent Shakespeare and Howard Fast translator).
Three magazines
In the 1960s, the actor Soumitra Chatterjee and Nirmalya Acharya, the editor of Ekshan, the iconic Bengali little magazine patronized by Satyajit Ray were regular visitors to Kathashilpa, which aspired to combine cultural excellence with left ideology. Kathashilpa acted as the cradle for three important Bengali little magazines: Ekshan in the mid 1960s; Prastuti Parba, in the mid 1970s, during and after the Emergency, and finally in the mid 1980s, Anwesha, a science monthly, edited by the physicist Abhijit Lahiri and the late Siddhartha Ghosh, the historian of science and technology.
The 1970s were a particularly tumultuous period in India marked by left extremism and saw the rise of numerous magazines, little and big. Some of these were suppressed by the authorities. All publications were subject to censorship during the State of Emergency proclaimed by the Government of India in 1975. The quarterly Prastuti Parba was originally published from the residence of Dipendu Chakraborty, a Bengali essayist and professor of English literature, at 32, Rani Harshamukhi Road, Kolkata 700002. Christened 'Prastuti' (Preparation) at its inception, it was ultimately registered as 'Prastuti Parba' (the Preparatory Phase) due to the unavailability of that particular title. The office was shifted to 11, Nrityogopal Chattejee Street, Kolkata 700002, the residence of Prabir Mukhopaddhyay, another associate of the journal. However, during the Emergency in 1975, the regular running of magazines such as Prastuti Parba proved perilous and finally it found refuge at Kathashilpa, 19 Shyamacharan De Street. Abani Ranjan Ray was bold enough to host this little magazine. At its peak, Prastuti Parba sold 1,500 copies.
During the fag end of the existence of Prastuti Parba in the early 1980s, some valuable special numbers were brought out, particularly on the great nonsense writer Sukumar Ray and the Hindi/Urdu Fiction writer Prem Chand. The Sukumar Ray issue (edited by Anupam Majumdar and Ashish Lahiri, co-edited by Salil Biswas and Prabrit Das Mahapatra) was specially assisted by his son Satyajit Ray. He not only designed the cover but also gave permission to print the invaluable personal diary of Sukumar Ray. Sovon Som, the noted art-historian and artist, drew the illustrations. Among the contributors was Sankha Ghosh, the poet and writer. The key figure behind the Premchand number of Prastuti Praba was the poet Ranajit Singha. Prabhakar Machwe, the Hindi writer, also helped a lot.
In the mid-1980s, Abani Ranjan Ray, assisted by Dhiren Ray, published a science monthly called Anwesha (Search), which immediately drew the attention of the Bengali intelligentsia. It sold at least 2,500 copies at its height. A special Science Fiction number of Anwesha carried translations of such legends as Ray Bradbury, Richard Sheckley and Arthur C. Clarke. Anwesha also published special issues on the great Indian Chemist Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray and the great physicist and plant-physiologist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, both of which have now become classics. Gouri Prasad Ghosh, the Shakespeare scholar and popular science writer who went on to win both the Rabindra (1994) and the Ananda (2001) awards, was an insider both of Anwesha and Kathashilpa.
Important publications
Kathashilpa published books encompassing a wide variety of genres. Despite unpredictability of funds, Abani Ranjan Ray did not publish anything he found lacking in taste. This made for some remarkable titles seeing print. Some of the copyrights of these books would later on be bought by large publishing houses. Kathashilpa could not afford to pay royalties to its authors, for whom the books were mostly labours of love. Many of these authors even participated in manning Kathashilpa stalls during the Calcutta Book Fair.
The following selection of the more important titles of Kathashilpa would show the range of its interests:
In the 1990s, Kathashilpa gradually declined. The political and cultural atmosphere changed with the advent of globalization and the disappointment with leftism in general. Montu Da's health failed and eventually Kathashipa changed hands in 2006. Abani Ranjan Ray died shortly after, in 2008. The establishment, along with a semblance of its famous logo, is still at the same address, but in a new avatar.