India offers help to Bangladesh to preserve Satyajit Ray's ancestral home

The Indian government on Tuesday noted with “profound regret” the news that the ancestral property of filmmaker and litterateur Satyajit Ray in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh is to be demolished. The property belonged to Satyajit Ray’s grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, a renowned writer-editor.

 

In a statement issued late Tuesday evening, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) urged the Bangladesh government to reconsider the demolition of the property and examine options for its repair and reconstruction as a museum of literature and a symbol of the shared culture of India and Bangladesh.

 

India also offered its cooperation to the neighbouring country’s government in preserving the structure and turning it into a museum as a symbol of Bengal’s socio-cultural renaissance.

 

 

Earlier in the day, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought the intervention of the governments of India and Bangladesh in saving Satyajit Ray’s ancestral house.

 

In its statement, the MEA said, “We note with profound regret that the ancestral property of noted filmmaker and litterateur Satyajit Ray in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, belonging to his grandfather and eminent litterateur, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, is being demolished.” 

 

The property, presently owned by the Government of Bangladesh, is in a state of disrepair, the MEA statement noted. “Given the building’s landmark status, symbolising Bangla cultural renaissance, it would be preferable to reconsider the demolition and examine options for its repair and reconstruction as a museum of literature and a symbol of the shared culture of India and Bangladesh,” the MEA said. The Government of India would be willing to extend cooperation for this purpose, it said.

 

In a post on X, the Bengal CM wrote, “I learnt from media reports that the memory-entwined ancestral house in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh city is being demolished. The reports say that the demolition process had already begun. This is heartbreaking news.”

 

“The Ray family is one of the most prominent torchbearers of Bengal’s culture. Upendrakishore was among the pillars of the Bengal Renaissance. I feel this house is inextricably linked to Bengal’s cultural history. I appeal to the Bangladeshi government and to all right-thinking people of that country to preserve this edifice of rich tradition. The Indian government should also intervene,” Banerjee added.

 

In June, Banerjee had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention in the alleged vandalism of Rabindranath Tagore’s ancestral property in Sirajganj, Bangladesh, urging him to ensure that “perpetrators of this heinous and mindless act” are brought to justice.

 

Upendrakishore (1863–1915), a prominent 19th-century litterateur, painter and publisher, was the father of Bengal’s celebrated poet Sukumar Ray (1887–1923), whose nonsense verse Abol Tabol is still popular among speakers of the Bengali language, and the grandfather of filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

 

Upendrakishore started the publication of Sandesh, a children’s magazine, in 1913. He was the son-in-law of Brahmo social reformer Dwarkanath Ganguly, whose second wife, Kadambini Ganguly, was India’s first woman doctor to practise Western medicine.

 

According to reports, the property, which was built by Upendrakishore more than a century ago and previously housed the Mymensingh Shishu Academy, fell into a state of disrepair after years of neglect by the authorities.

 

“The house has been left abandoned for 10 years. Shishu Academy activities have been operating from a rented space,” Bangladeshi daily The Daily Star reported, quoting Md Mehedi Zaman, the district Children Affairs Officer.

 

The newspaper attributed the same officer to state that a semi-concrete building with several rooms will be built in place of the old house to restart the academy’s activities there.

 

(With PTI inputs)