Humanity Dehumanised: From Hungry Bengal

Chittaprosad is best known for his hard-hitting depictions of the Bengal Famine in the 1940s. He travelled across affected regions in Bengal as an artist-reporter for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) documenting the conditions of the famine. This work is from a compilation of twenty eyewitness sketches from across the Midnapore district, published as a book ‘Hungry Bengal’. Done in the mode of social realism, these sketches capture not only the physical effects of food scarcity and diseases but also provide a sense of the immense psychological trauma wreaked upon the population.