History and Culture – Nishith Ranjan Roy
Mr. Sudhir Kumar Mitra is a well-known literary figure in the Bengali-speaking world, with a fairly large number of publications to his credit. The most outstanding among these is Hooghly Zillar Itihas and Banga Samaj in three volumes—a critical, scholarly and exhaustive study of Bengal District in the larger context of undivided Bengal and even of India of the period covered therein. It remains to this day an unsurpassed record of a districtwise survey and history. Innumerable articles on various topics of primarily socio-cultural interest have also come out of his facile pen. Mr. Mitra whose connection with Bengali literary associations has been long and deep prefers to write in his mother-language. But his yield in the same area of investigative study in English is by no means negligible.
The collection of twenty write-ups appearing in the present volume attest alike to the variety of his interest and the lucidity of exposition, based on strictly relevant but not easily accessible documents. This has lent to his writings the rare character of excellent literary exercises, combining narrational felicity with critical analysis. Nearly half of the papers are studies in biography of eminent individuals, involving, at places, re-assessment of relevant evidences. Five cover topics of primarily religious interest—a field in which Mr. Mitra has made the impact of his writings irresistably felt. The rest of the discourses shed welcome light on such subjects of general interest as the First Motion Picture of India, the First two Graduates of the Calcutta University, C.M.D.A., Education Cess, Hooghly and the Andamans. The treatise on the National Language is superbly written and deserves closest attention.
Mr. Mitra has already laid his reading public under heavy debt. The present title meant for wider readers in and around West Bengal will make the burden debt still heavier.
Society Religious Culture of Bengal