Natabara Samantaray

If one attempts a survey of literary criticism in Odisha after Independence, Natabara Samantaray strikes one as its most distinguished practitioner. Building on the achievements of his celebrated predecessors like Gopinath Nanda Sarma, Nilakantha Das, Artaballabha Mohanty and Mayadhar Mansinha, he enabled criticism in Odisha to scale new heights of excellence. Born in 1918 in a village in Puri District, he received his early education at Puri Zilla School. He went to Benares and studied English, Sanskrit, Mathematics, Greek History and Geography as a student of intermediate classes at Queen’s College in the city. He graduated from Ravenshaw College with Sanskrit (honours) and Mathematics (pass). After obtaining diploma in Education, he began his career as a school inspector in Daringbadi, in the highlands of Odisha. Subsequently, he taught Mathematics and Geography at a high school in Angul. He secured a master’s in Odia literature as a private student from Utkal University in 1948 and was appointed as lecturer at Maharaja Purna Chandra College, Baripada. Meeting the renowned archaeologist and scholar Paramananda Acharya here proved a turning point in Samantaray’s life. Had this happy accident not taken place, Samantaray, like many of his contemporaries would have focussed his attention on the study of ancient and medieval Odia literature. It was Acharya who awakened him to the immense possibilities that waited to be explored in the study of modern Odia literature, and urged him to seek answers to the intriguing question as to why the literary and cultural landscape of Odisha changed so dramatically in the nineteenth century. In an essay titled “Mu Kipari Gabesana Kali” [My Life as a Researcher], Samantaray reminisces about how Acharya made him aware of the importance of using archival resources and gave him unrestricted access to his own collection of rare periodicals and books. Thus, was laid a firm foundation for a sustained historical interpretation of literature which resulted in twenty-four books and more than two hundred essays. A selection of his essays in English translation has been brought out by Sahitya Akademi under the title Natabara Samantaray: A Reader (2017).

Although his work illuminates many aspects of pre-print literature, what makes his contribution to criticism unforgettable is the extraordinary depth and comprehensiveness of his study of Odia literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, we shall limit our discussion to this aspect of his achievement as a critic, especially his evaluation and interpretation of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s (1843-1918) fictional works. In the monumental work Odia Sahityara Itihas: 1803-1920 (1964), he has employed, with brilliant dexterity, apparently non-literary sources to account for a complex and momentous literary change. He subjects administrative reports, policy documents, missionary tracts, textbooks and examination questions to close and imaginative scrutiny in order to show how these not only transformed the education system but created a new readership for a new literature. For example, he analyses the changing nature of questions set in school examinations in the 1870s and 80s to indicate how a taste for modern literature was consciously created in the young. Similarly, Samantaray insightfully explains the way new technology such as the railway impacted the development of modern Odia literature. The book is a unique blend of meticulous documentation and objective analysis, a combination which gave writing literary history in Odisha a wholly new direction.

Samantaray is at his liveliest when he explores the novels and short stories of Fakir Mohan Senapati. It may be mentioned here that Senapati is famous for having ushered in social realism in Odia fiction and effected a radical break with existing narrative conventions. Moreover, his writing enjoyed immense popularity. Not surprisingly, therefore, he received considerable critical attention from eminent literary figures such as Gopal Chandra Praharaj, Ashraf Ali khan, Mohini Mohan Senapati and Nilakantha Das. Illuminating though their comments on Senapati certainly were, they mostly focussed upon his robust humour, moral insight, portrayal of contemporary social reality, masterful use of everyday speech and his creation of true-to-life characters. The perspective Natabara Samantaray offers on Senapati is strikingly more ambitious. Using internal evidence collected through a painstakingly thorough examination of Senapati’s four novels—Lachchama, Chha Mana Atha Gunth, Mamu and Prayaschit—and locating them in the specific contexts in which they are embedded, Samantaray shows how the novelist is engaged in dramatizing the unfolding of a grand historical process. In “Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Novels: A Study in Odisha’s Social History” (1955), Samantaray demonstrates that together the four novels offer an insight into the events and processes that transformed Odia society between the early part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century. Senapati’s characters, while living out their individual lives in specific moral and social settings, also embody dynamic historical forces, and unconsciously play their part in the larger drama of transition.

Natabara Samantaray also displays a rare and impressive ability to step out of the confining role of an academic critic, and can imaginatively inhabit the universe of a creative writer. He singles out a few much-maligned and marginal characters in some celebrated works of fiction and with great aplomb presents the action and characters of the narrative from their point of view.  This makes possible a refreshingly new and boldly unorthodox reading of these works, and undermines and challenges certain dominant interpretations of the text. Notable examples of this fascinating experiment in criticism include “Mad Bhagia’s Testimony” (1972) and “Netramani’s Diary” (1977). In the former, Bhagia, a minor character and victim figure in Chha Mana Atha Gunth, explains a sequence of events leading to land becoming a saleable commodity and the weakening community bonds. Similarly, Netramani, portrayed as a shrew and a villain in Kalindi Charan Panigrahi's iconic novel, Matira Manisha (1931), energetically counters a patriarchal point of view which squarely blames her for the disintegration of a joint family. One rarely finds examples of academic critics stepping into the shoes of creative writers with such delightful panache.

Although Samantaray wrote exclusively in Odia and devoted himself to the study of Odia literature for almost half a century, he was intimately familiar with western scholarship and its methods. However, unlike many of his contemporaries and successors, he eschewed the obsessive use of quotations from English critics to substantiate his arguments and observations. And yet, his critical outlook had a cosmopolitan breadth, to which some of his essays bear an eloquent testimony. His essay, “Patent Medicine: A Study in Sources” exemplifies the consummate skill with which he has employed the comparative framework. In this, he shows how Senapati, who bases his story on Satyendranath Tagore’s one-act play Nididhyasan, which in turn is modelled on the Japanese play Za-zen, goes beyond his sources and transforms his story into a tale of moral regeneration of a decadent feudal elite.

In celebrating his formidable achievements as a critic, one should never lose sight of the almost impossible odds he had to overcome in order to pursue his passion. He battled deprivation, indifference and hostility, but his intense love for literature sustained him all through. His luminous legacy lives on and should inspire future critics to carry it forward.