The Final Question

Sesh Prashna (‘The Final Question’) is one of Sharatchandra Chatterjee’s last major novels, and perhaps his most radically innovative. Breaking the bounds of Bengali romantic fiction, Sharatchandra challenges the norms of nationhood, society, and womanhood. The novel caused a sensation when it was first published in 1931, drawing censure from conservative critics but enthusiastic support from general readers, especially women. The heroine, Kamal, is exceptional for her time. She lives and travels by herself, has relationships with various men, looks poverty and suffering in the face, and asserts the autonomy of her individual being. In the process, she tears apart the frame of the expatriate Bengali society of Agra, where she lives. Kamal’s life is set off against those of other women, and of the men who enter into relations with them. On another plane, it is placed against the evolving ideology of Indian nationalism. Through Kamal, Sharatchandra questions Indian tradition by the canons of a radical modernity. But modernity too is probed and assessed, and many questions remain unanswered at the end of the novel. This major work is translated here into English for the first time. It reveals a new face of Sharatchandra to readers who know him only in translation. It also extends and challenges established notions of the political and social milieu of its own day and of ours.