Tales of a Distant War: The First World War and Coexisting Worldviews in Ramananda Chattopadhyay’s Prabasi

Abstract

With the First World War, colonial peripheries like India experienced superfluity of news contents and general interest among the newsreaders regarding wars and world politics. The reportage style of various periodicals like the Prabasi started to base on that newfound cultural consumption market with their shift of focus towards the events and interpretation related to war. This article argues that the prior growth of cosmopolitanism in the Bengali cultural public sphere found a boost in this process. The war acted as a catalyst and started producing editorial pieces substantiating subnationalism. These nationalist and internationalist ideals, despite their innate contradiction, coexisted and furthered the future expansion of the Bengali worldview.