The Rays Before Satyajit

Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India

Chandak Sengoopta author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:OUP India

Published:23rd Jun '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Rays Before Satyajit cover

Although the filmmaker Satyajit Ray is well-known across the world, few outside Bengal know much about the diverse contributions of his forebears to printing technology, nationalism, childrens literature, feminism, advertising, entreprenurial culture and religious reform. Even within Bengal, the earlier Rays are often regarded exclusively as childrens writers. The first study in English of the multifarious interests and accomplishments of the Ray family and its collateral branches, The Rays Before Satyajit interweaves the Ray saga with the larger history of Indian modernity and its contradictions. Whilst eager to learn from the West and rarely drawn to simple-minded nationalism, the Rays, at their best, shunned mere imitation and sought to create forms of the modern that were thoroughly Indian and enthusiastically cosmopolitan. Some of the outcomes of this quest such as Upendrakishore Rays innovations in half-tone photography were even appreciated in the West, though the metropolitan careers of colonial innovators, as the book shows, were inevitably constrained by forces beyond their control. Ranging confidently across the history of religion, literature, science, technology and entrepreneurial culture, The Rays before Satyajit is not only a collective biography of an extraordinary family but illuminates the history of Indian modernity from a bracingly original perspective.

The most salient features of this well-researched book include its lucid language and detailed notes at the end of every chapter. This study makes an extremely important contribution as an alternate history of the anti-colonial movement and is also a timely intervention in research pertaining to post-colonialism...Sengoopta's book is...a very important study illustrating the rich legacy of 'The Rays before Satyajit', indeed a fitting title. * Devapriya Sanyal, Hindu College, University of Delhi, South Asia Research *

ISBN: 9780199464753

Dimensions: 223mm x 147mm x 31mm

Weight: 616g

426 pages