SOURCE: Ray, Sibnarayan. “Ideologies and the Alienated Writer.” In Society and the Writer: Essays on Literature in Modern Asia, edited by Wang Gungwu, M. Guerrero, and D. Marr, pp. 221-37. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Ray discusses Dutt's status as an alienated Bengali writer and his influence on later writers of the region.

I

Generalizations on the literature and society of any country are always hazardous, much more so when the country is India where even the recognized major languages are far too many to be acquired by a single individual, and where competent translations of literary works from one living language into another are unfortunately still rather few.¹ I have, therefore, chosen to limit the present inquiry to the modern literature of one living language with which I am most familiar. Even here I propose to focus on...