Department of Hindi, B.S.N.V.P.G. College, Lucknow, India.
Sharatchandra Chatterjee (1876–1938) was the first eminent writer in Bangala Literature who established the woman with her human personality free from any kind of inferiority complex. So he gained popularity and criticism both. In that feudal society woman was not more than an object and her whole life was dedicated to save sanctity and chastity as an established ‘goal’ of her life. The woman unfit on this scale was supposed to be ‘wreched’ otherwise a ‘godess’. But Sharat hammered on this concept and put a new, justified and human viewpoint to evaluae the woman and thus broke the limits of ‘Bangla renaissance’. Sharat first questioned - is a woman not a human being? Endowed with the qualities of self respect, determination, patience, power of self decision and to protest against injustice; why the chastity and sanctity should be the touchstone of her personality? He portrayed that a ‘Sati’ woman can also be inhuman as Nirmala (Sati) and an ‘Asati’ (wretched woman) can be a good human being like Kamal (Sheshprashna) Abhaya, Rajlaxmi and Kamal Lata (Shrikant). Hence Sharat was more advance to his contemporary thinkers like Tagore, Gandhi and Premchand in Saying that, “Satitva is not the only quality of womanhood, being human is more than that”. In present ‘post-modern’ society a rapist can save himself if proves that the victim is characterless. Thus even law establishes that a ‘characterless’ raped women is not a human being. But Sharat strongly rejected this thought even in that time. He always focused the human aspect of such women and said that the concept of ‘Satitva’ is not matter of pride, but a cause of worry. It is of no use of society and the society is responsible for so called ‘Characterless women’. He echoes the opinion of great Chinese writer Lu-Shun.
