So Many Hungers! - Still an Existing Reality in the Country (In Reference to Bhabani Bhattacharya's Novel, 'So Many Hungers')

Bhabani Bhattacharya's 'So Many Hungers!' is a story about different hungers of the people representing different sections of the country during pre-independence. These hungers demonstrate their spiritual and psychological statuses. As other novels of the period, this novel also highlights a theme of social importance. The author deals in detail with the social setting of the time, with his own style of objective treatment. The famine of 1943 brings so many hungers, the hunger for food, money and sex, the exploitation of man by man seemed to him to have become the creed of the day. The prevailing social conditions also worked upon the growing mind of Bhattacharya, and inspired him to create his first novel. The famine of 1943 which stalked through the scared soil of Bengal, was one of the such events as he himself confesses: "Then the great famine swept down upon Bengal. The emotional stirrings I felt (more than two million men, women and children died of slow starvation amid a man '” made scarcity) were a sheer compulsion to creativity". The result was the novel 'So Many Hungers!.' The novel is regarded as a socio-political novel because it deals with the social, political and economical history of the pre- independent India. The characters of the novel represent different types of hungers prevalent in the Indian society at the time when the country faced a great famine. But the characters are also individuals because they have their own styles of behavior in different situations. The characters also seem to belong to all ages. It is very much clear when the relevance of the novel is taken into consideration. The issues raised in the novel are still present in the current Indian society. This research paper presents the very subject of discussion on the relevance of the social themes raised in the novel to the present day situations in India. The novel is full of realistic but pathetic scenes that they haunt the reader to a great extent. And one may be surprised to find the same situations in the country, and in which the people are still living, even after seventy-five years. The aim of this paper is also to highlight those situations faced in every walk of life in the independent India. R. Chandra Sekhar"So Many Hungers! - Still an Existing Reality in the Country (In Reference to Bhabani Bhattacharya's Novel, 'So Many Hungers')" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-2 , February 2018, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd9589.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/english/9589/so-many-hungers!---still-an-existing-reality-in-the-country-in-reference-to-bhabani-bhattacharyas-novel-so-many-hungers/r-chandra-sekhar