Sandipan Chattopadhyay

Sandipan Chattopadhyay (25 October 1933 – 12 December 2005) was an Indian Bengali writer. His 1961 book "Kritadas Kritadasi" changed the landscape of Bengali fiction and made his name. A staunch anti-establishment figure and a supporter of creative freedom, Sandipan for some time refused association with the big Bengali publishing houses. He was one of the pioneers of the Hungryalism Movement হাংরি আন্দোলন, also known as the Hungry generation, during 1961–65, though he, along with Binoy Majumdar, Shakti Chattopadhyay quit the movement over literary differences with fellow members Malay Roy Choudhury, Subimal Basak, Tridib Mitra and Samir Roychoudhury. He was awarded the Sahitya Academy award for his book Ami O Banabihari.In His Sahityo Academy Award-winning novel Ami O Banabihari (2000), Sandipan fashions a very subtle critique of the ruling Communist party on the basis of an exclusion and silencing of the real ‘sub-altern’—the tribal proletariat. His decision to dedicate the novel to Budhyadeb Bhattacharya (called ‘poet, dramatist and minister’ in the dedicatory note) is a funny little polemic! He died after a prolonged respiratory illness in December 2005.