Hunger In Bhattacharya Essay

Hunger has haunted humankind throughout the known history of the world. It has always remained a mystery that history of hunger persists in all the societies— whether of scarcity or plenty. It is a vicious product of modern human life. For a layman hunger simply refers as an inadequacy in individual dietary intake relative to the kind and quantity of food required for growth, for activity and for the maintenance of good health. While this definition is broad enough to include voluntary forms of self-denial, but there are also other forms of hunger which embarks its presence latently in this world. The experience of hunger and its immediate consequences are individual in nature yet it affects the functioning of the social aggregations within

The reason for instigating hunger in the novels of Bhattacharya chiefly owe to the World War II (1939-1945), the Bengal Famine (1943), the Freedom struggle during (1919-1947) and the Indo-China War (1962) which altogether brought innumerable miseries to the people of India; it uprooted, killed a lot of people leading to a disastrous scenario in the history of India. For example, during the British Rule in India, at one side it provides tendency of British rulers as the hunger to retain power, accumulate wealth, exploitation of raw material, natural and human resources; whereas on the other side for common ones, it is the hunger for self rule or freedom. The resultant catalyst between forces (British rulers and Indians) thus creates a sort of hunger matrix having diverse elements which transforms a man into a perennial slave of hunger.
So Many Hungers! is the first novel of Bhabani Bhattacharya published in the year 1947 just after India’s Independence and the partition of the country. It was written in the backdrop of impending independence. So Many Hungers! is primarily devoted to the man’s hunger for food, faith and freedom in which Bhattacharya has used the word ‘hunger’ as refrain and is expressed in such a manner that it becomes a matrix which forms the central gist of the novel. In So Many Hungers!, he