Representation of Colonial Bengali Culture as Depicted in Rabindranath Tagore’s Short Stories

Abstract

Colonialism especially British Colonialism in India has a great impact on Indian culture especially in Bengal as we know Calcutta is the capital of British India at the colonial period. At the colonial period, undivided Bengal rapidly coloured itself in English, British culture but not every social class rather we find the kind of hybrid culture in so called higher society, economically-culturally rich society. The famous ‘Babu’ culture is carefully depicted in literature by Rabindranath Tagore. In Tagore’s literary writings, we basically find economically-culturally rich society. His most of the male protagonists are from economically rich society and educated that’s quite normal in that time. What is abnormal at that time is his representation of female protagonists who are educated at that when society thinks that education is a kind of curse for women because educated women lost their husbands and became widow. In his writings Rabindranath deliberately challenges as well as breaks this social norm and presents a kind of new society where both man and woman are equal, free to choose their own way to lead life. In this paper, I want to show how British culture helps to represent Bengal society newly; how Colonialism influenced Rabindranath to challenge the rotten social norms and to depict a culturally modern Bengal; the importance of myth to reshape Bengali culture in his writings. As a case study, I select few of Rabindranath Tagore’s short stories (translated version).