The Bhadralok as Truth-Seeker: Towards a Social History of the Bengali Detective
The Bhadralok as Truth-Seeker: Towards a Social History of the Bengali Detective

Summary/Abstract: The figure of the socially-engaged detective who transcends his – a highly gendered agency operates here – generically-sanctioned roles as a glorified intellectual mercenary or “gumshoe”, solver of conundrums and “tangled skeins”, champion of the rule-of-law and keeper of the last resort, while attempting to uphold a universe of moral and ethical values that, simultaneously, do not stray too far from the high road of societal and political acceptability, is a figure to conjure within the literary history of Bengal in the twentieth century. In the present essay, the attempt will be made to study, through a comparativist’s prism, this gravitas, endowed by society, which is associated with the image of the successful private investigator in Bengal; often, his is a voice striking a blow for the spirit of rational enquiry, as with Feluda, and, in other cases, he upholds the dignity of the traditional order/s, while exposing its/their soft underbelly of moral corruption and criminal collusion, as with Byomkesh Bakshi.

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