Adhunantika Controversy
Samir wrote several treatises on Adhunantika aspects of our Indian, especially Bengali society, that have impacted post-colonial mindset, and obviously arts, literature and culture. Critics have claimed that Adhunantika is Postmodern version of Hungryalism, and that postmodern features Bengali creative writing had emerged way back in 1960s when the Hungry generation movement was launched with freely distributed weekly bulletins which could have been published by any participant of the movement. Samir introduced an Indianised version of postmodernism which was being called, apart from Adhunantika, Uttaradhunika, Uttar-Adhunika, Bitadhunika, Bhashabadal, Atichetana, Adhunikottarvad etc. Hungryalism got a new valuation with these concepts, and the newer generation of poets, writers and thikners got an alternative platform. Samir edited, since 1990, books on Ecofeminism, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Complexity, Hybridity and The Other. He edited Postmodern Bengali Poetry (2001) and Postmodern Bengali Short Stories (2002) which included writings from Bangladesh as well as entire India. Earlier only upper-caste writers from West Bengal used to have prime of place in such collections. Samir changed it all; he invited poems and short stories from all strata of, not only West Bengal, but entire India and Bangladesh. A new word Bahirbanga was coined by him for diasporic Bengalis.
Read more about this topic: Samir Roychoudhury
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“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)