An Expository Study of Naxalite Movement in Samaresh Majumdar’s Novel Kaalbela: A Tale of Compromised Romance Amidst a Revolution Gone Awry

Revolution, as an inexpungible process of change, has been witnessed in the entire world from the inception of human civilisation. But it emerged in India perhaps most gruesomely during 1967 with the Maoist uprising from the womb of Naxalbari. This insurgency had a colossal and alarming effect on society, politics and literature. Samaresh Majumdar’s novel “Kaalbela” profoundly delineates this ghastly movement through the projection of the life of Animesh Mitra, a young boy from Jalpaiguri who came to Kolkata to study at Scottish Church College amidst this gory backdrop and gradually got ideologically inclined to the Naxalite movement. His career was renounced, and his love for Madhabilata was compromised. But the aftermath of this socio-political turbulence was even more petrified for Animesh, as after being tortured in the custody he remained nothing more than just a creature who could only sit and wobble. The aim of this paper is to study the crux of Animesh’s ideological conflicts between his personal and political preferences as he was torn between the illusion and reality of Naxalite movement, the ideals of which promised him a beaming future but offered a derelict present. Coming to terms with life, he gradually realised that it was not the ethereal love of Madhabilata and their son Arko, that attributed significance to his otherwise paralysed existence.