What would Chittaprosad have made of the current crisis and the failure, at so many levels, of the state to offer relief to millions of the worst affected? Touring Bengal in 1943-44, he saw diseases fell entire populations of villages as famine ravaged the countryside. There was, as now, neither work nor food apart from miserly doles hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. The rich hoarded supplies and held on to their wealth; the poor simply wasted away — an invisible people whose disappearance was unremarkable and unremarked.
An artist at the start of his career —
An artist at the start of his career —