Cattopadhyay, Saratchandra

(also Saratchandra Chatterji or Chatterjee). Born Sept. 15, 1876, in the village of Debanadapur, Bengal; died Jan. 16, 1938, in Calcutta. Indian Bengali-language writer.

From 1903 to 1916, Cattopadhyay lived in Burma. In the early 1920’s he took part in the national liberation movement. Cattopadhyay at first wrote works containing elements of romanticism; later, however, he turned to realism. He dealt with the status of women in a caste society and criticized feudal and bourgeois mores in the novels Gone Astray (1917; Russian translation, 1971), The Burned House (1920; Russian translation, 1958), and Village Society (1916; Russian translation, 1971). The novel Srikanta (parts 1–4, 1917–33; Russian translation, 1960) presents a multifaceted depiction of Indian society.

Cattopadhyay was the author of Make Way (1926), the first anticolonial political novel in Indian literature. His novel One Last Question (1931) is concerned with the place of ethical and religious traditions in modern life.