MARXIST IDEOLOGY AND COLONIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BOATMAN OF THE PADMA

This article offers an analytical study of how changes in the social relationship between humans and nature are depicted through an extensive amplification of the Bengali novel The Boatman of the Padma, written in 1936 by Manik Bandopadhyay. It explores the interactive process between Marxist ideology and arguments of the literary movement in the turbulent political times of the 1930s, a period that sensitised litterateurs to the relationship between marginal subaltern populations and their respective environment. Seen through the prism of class relations, issues of Marxist ideology, colonial encounter and critique, and also some assertions of self-hood, are brought out in this analysis.