ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the problems of representing famine, devoting attention to a short story by Manik Bandyopadhyay and a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Ashani Sanket. It argues that the Great Famine marks a moment of exceptionality, its greatest representations can memorialize and mourn the event, but never exhaust its significance. Paul R. Greenough’s analysis of the rupture of the “moral economy” of rural Bengal has received much praise, and its main contentions have been accepted by many scholars. The argument that the Bengal famine was caused by the breakdown of traditional systems of entitlement rather that of food supply per se has received a great deal of critical attention and dissenting voices are many and varied. Literary representations of the famine in Bengal render the breakdown in profoundly moral terms, seeking to come to grips with its inmost workings in human motivation and action.
