ABSTRACT
As a pedagogue, the dizzying array of Feluda’s knowledge ranging from the history of criminology in Europe to the formal intricacies of the thumri, attest to Ray’s own belief in an asymmetrical alignment between schooling and education. However, Feluda’s suspicion of institutionalised structures becomes a thematic leitmotif; since his investigation too explores alternative, unorthodox and non-institutional avenues of decoding. Bengali popular literature predating Feluda was often centred on undisclosed secrets and thus titled Kechha or Guptakatha. Such “Literature of Sensation” showed an overt reliance on obscenity by narrating adventures of incest, adultery and other forbidden illicit acts as in Haricharan Ray’s London Rahasya and Kaliprasanna Chattopadhyay’s undated Haridashir Guptokatha. Feluda shows postcolonial modernity’s chronological ambivalence as he is a traditionalist in the true bhadralok sense, embodying a romanticised post enlightenment individualism. He prefers the meditative mode of ratiocination over technologically oriented forms of criminological investigation.
