Bengali Science Fiction - Earliest Writers

Earliest Writers

Bengali writers wrote various science fiction works in the 19th and early 20th centuries during the British Raj, before the partition of India. Isaac Asimov’s assertion that "true science fiction could not really exist until people understood the rationalism of science and began to use it with respect in their stories" is true for the earliest science fiction written in the Bengali language.

The earliest notable Bengali science fiction was Jagadananda Roy's Shukra Bhraman (Travels to Venus), published in 1879. This story is of particular interest to literary historians, as it described a journey to another planet; its description of the alien creatures that are seen in Uranus used an evolutionary theory similar to the origins of man: "They resembled our apes to a large extent. Their bodies were covered with dense black fur. Their heads were larger in comparison with their bodies, limbs sported long nails and they were completely naked." This story was published a decade before H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) in which Wells describes the aliens from Mars.

Some specialists credit Hemlal Dutta as one of the earliest Bengali science fiction writers for his Rohosso (The Mystery). This story was published in two installments in 1882 in the pictorial magazine Bigyan Dorpon (Mirror of Science).

Jagadish Chandra Bose, now considered as the father of Bengali science fiction, wrote Niruddesher Kahini in 1896. This tale of weather control, one of the first Bengali science fiction works, features getting rid of a cyclone using a little bottle of hair oil (Kuntol Keshori). Later, he submitted the story to Obbakto as Polatok Tufan (Run Away Cyclone).

Roquia Sakhawat Hussain (Begum Rokeya), an early Islamic feminist, wrote Sultana's Dream, one of the earliest examples of feminist science fiction in any language. It depicts a feminist utopia of role reversal, in which men are locked away in seclusion, in a manner corresponding to the traditional Muslim practice of purdah for women. The short story, written in English, was first published in the Madras-based Indian Ladies Magazine in 1905, and three years later appeared as a book.

Premendra Mitra wrote the first novel, Kuhoker Deshe (In the Land of Mystery). Hemendra Kumar Ray wrote Meghduter Morte Agomon.