The contested city: Speculative fiction and metropolitan imagination in colonial Bengal

ABSTRACT

Speculative fiction emerged in 19th-century Bengal as a mode of narrative engagement with the city’s colonial modernity during its contact with British colonialism. This fiction, however, was essentially a city-based enterprise interacting with, and moulding, the imperial city of Kolkata in myriad ways. The interaction gave rise to dissenting voices within the gradually emerging educated class of Kolkata. This article explores such intersections of the city and speculative fiction with the aid of two conceptual arcs – morality and corporeality – and argues that, located within divergent imaginaries of representing the city, they construct a contested cityscape. These arcs produce an alternative metropolitan imagination that subverts the colonial imaginary of the city. The article examines two early speculative texts written by Kylas Chunder Dutt and Shoshee Chunder Dutt to explore the nature of this imagination. The colonial imaginary of Kolkata within this speculative textual space offers a locus distinct from the colonizers.

KEYWORDS:

• Indian speculative fiction
• colonial urban literature
• Indian writing in English
• metropolitan imagination
• Kylas Chunder Dutt
• Shoshee Chunder Dutt

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All translations from Bangla are our own.

2. In many of the scientific journals of the times, the problems of loss of ethicality due to western education are discussed with great fervour. The reasons are listed as drunkenness, European medicine, deviant food habits, child marriage, cohabitation, uncontrolled sexuality, lasciviousness, prostitution,and so on (see P. Basu 2016).

3. Legislation included the Lottery Act (1844), the Act for the Improvement of the Town of Calcutta (1847), the Water Supply Act (1863), a series of by-laws for sanitation and hygiene (1863 onwards), a resolution restricting the subaltern festival Charak Puja (1865), the Hackney Carriage Act (1864), the Dramatic Performance Control Act (1876), and a series of press censorship laws culminating in the Vernacular Press Act (1878).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Atanu Bhattacharya

Atanu Bhattacharya teaches at the Centre for English Studies at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India. His research interests include technology, English language, and culture studies and their interactions with pedagogy. His current research interests include Bengali science fiction.

Preet Hiradhar

Preet Hiradhar is associate professor of teaching at the Department of English, Lingnan University in Hong Kong. She researches technology and digital discourses in linguistic, literary, and cultural texts. She is the co-author of Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age (2016) and is interested in digital interventions in language pedagogy.