Hungry Generation and Beat Generation are Completely Different

Allen Ginsberg took photographs of beggars, lepers, sadhus, lame men, boy sleeping on foot path etc to show the photos to Western readers. Hungry Generation writers and poets who visited Europe, America, Thailand, Malaysia  etc dd not take photographs of poor people in those country to show Indian readers. This is a great difference in the outlook and vision of Hungry Generation poets and writers from those of Beats.

Though some of the Hungry Generation writers and poets like Basudeb Dasgupta, Abani Dhar and Saileswar Ghose regularly visited the Calcutta red light area and had three mistress named Mira, Baby and Dipti whom they drank hand danced with, none of the Hungry Generation writers and poets were homosexuals like the Beat writers and poets. This a difference which should be noticed and underlined by critics.

Through their manifesto on politics, religion etc the Hungries directly attacked the society. The sent masks of demons, animals etc to the top people of Bengal Establishment, telling them to remove their masks. The distributed a marriage card wherein it was printed "Fuck the bastards of the Gangshalik School of Poetry. They sent a baby's shoe box to a reputed newspaper for review. No other literary group had such weapons in their armour either in USA or in Europe. Even the DADA movement did not attack the French society directly. The Beats resorted to naked reading of poems or using so called obscene words in their poems and prose. They published naked group photographs for entertaining their own group.                                                Both the manifesto had created so much turmoil in Calcutta society that The Daily Jugantar, one of the leading newspaper of the time, wrote their main editorial on them on two successive days.                               

 Copyright © 2018 The Teleg Hungry poets & Ginsberg UTTARAN DAS GUPTA Dan “Harry Potter” Radcliffe playing Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings and Sam Riley portraying Sal Paradise in the screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s iconic On the Road has sparked recent interest in the Beats — arguably the most influential American writers post World War II. But neither film explores their travels to India. American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky arrived at Bombay (Mumbai) on February 15, 1962, following the footsteps of Gary Snyder and wife Joanne Kyger. While wandering all over north India, he stayed for a while in Patna, at the home of two poets — Malay Roychowdhury and Samir Roychowdhury. Malay — offered a Sahitya Akademi award in 2003 — is one of India’s iconic contemporary writers. In November 1961, he had launched the Hungry Generation liter

The Beats were, in many ways, an international literary movement. Although in defining the Beat Generation , we tend to look at a core of three writers, expanding out to include others like Gregory Corso and “ second generation Beats ” like Diane di Prima, and they are all American. Sure, there were British artists inspired by the Beats, and India’s Hungry Generation , and all across the world youths writing poetry like Ginsberg… but in the end, the Beat Generation was an American movement. Only it wasn’t purely American: it was a bunch of Americans inspired by the outside world.  The Beats looked out from Post-War America at a big wide world and they took influence from it and sought refuge in it. Although the Beat Generation eventually spread their own gospel to the world, with kids reading Kerouac even as far away as China , initially it was the world that inspired these young writers. From Europe the Romantic poets and Renaissance artists provided inspiration, and from A

One may find in Allen Ginsberg's 'India Journals' that he is trying to write poems in the same form as that of HOWL and KADDISH but he is failing to regain the same breathing lines. This is because he had been attending to various Bengali poetry readings. Bengali poems did not have such long breathing lines as that of HOWL and KADDISH.  After Ginsberg came in contact with Anil Karanjai and Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay in Benares he attended several functions where Ramcharitmanas of poet Tualsidasa  were sung with the help of harmonium tunes. Some of the Hungries in Calcutta also sang at Khasaitola the songs composed by them. Malay Roychoudhury had taken Ginsberg to his elder sister's house at Patna where Ginsberg say his nieces playing harmonium and singing at the same time. Ginsberg purchased a harmonium at Benares and carried it to USA for singing 'On The Tongue' poems just like to bards of Benares.                                                 

When City Lights published Allen Ginsberg's HOWL, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was implicated in Obscenity case. In support of him writers and critics came forward and as a result therefore, the charges were dismissed and HOWL became a much read poem. It may be noted that writers and poets did not complain against HOWL. But there is a difference between Lawrence Ferlinghetti's ordeal and Malay Roychoudhury's Obscenity trial case. Academicians, writers, newspaper barons had complained against Malay Roychoudhury's poem to the Calcutta Police as a result of which Malay Roychoudhury was arrested. While arresting Malay Roychoudhury, He was hand cuffed and a rope was tied around his waist and he was forced to walk the streets in that condition with seven murderers, dacoits and pick pockets.  Malay was sentenced for a month for writing the poem by Calcutta Court. This is a great difference between Beat Generation and Hungry Generation.                                         

The internet is flooded with photographs of Beat writers and poets in various poses in various countries, in groups or solo. However, there are only handful of photographs of Hungries, not only on the internet but also with the relatives of Hungries. They Hungries did not give much importance to photographs and neither did they have the money to get photographed. During the movement the Bengali reporters were more interested in humiliating them in their columns than writing about them seriously. However, other than Bengali press, the reporters of other vernacular  press in India such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalee wrote about them.

The Beats read their poems in colleges, auditoriums etc whereas the Hungries never got a chance to read their poems on recognised platforms like colleges, Universities, academy halls. The Hungries read their poems at Howrah and Sealdah railway stations, the grave of famous Bengali poet Madhusudan Dutt and at the country liquor den called Khalasitola which is frequented by labourers and even beggars .                                                                         Country liquor den in Calcutta

The Beats were, what Edward Said called 'Orientalists'. This may be proved from the photographs of the paupers, lepers, half naked sadhus, lame men in Allen Ginsberg's 'India Journals'. Allen Ginsberg was interested in such photographs only which he sold to Western readers through his book. He met all sorts of Hindu sadhus in India and ultimately adopted Buddhism, changing the sect twice. Same is the case with other Beats who got interested in Buddhism.  One may wonder how come there were always photographers and reporters to display Allen Ginsberg's 'Orientalism' to the Western Press.  When the reporters arrived at his Benares room he took them for photo opportunities. His Blake vision disappeared thereafter. The Hungries, almost all of them, though born in orthodox Hindu families, turned out to be atheists.                                            

Some critics have written that Hungry Generation movement resulted from Ginsberg's India visit. They are just fools. The first Hungry Generation bulletin was published from Patna by Malay Roychoudhury on 1st November 1961 whereas Allen Ginsberg arrived at Calcutta in late 1962. Prior to Ginsberg's arrival at Calcutta more than thirty Hungry Generation bulletin had been published. None of Hungry Generation writers had read Beat poems or prose before Lawrence Ferlinghetti sent them to Malay Roychoudhury to his Patna address in 1964 during the Court Case. Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky visited Samir Roychoudhury at his Patna hutment at Chaibasa in late 1962. Ginsberg visited Malay Roychoudhury at Patna in  April 1963. Neither Samir nor Malay had read Ginsberg's works before his arrival. None of the Hungries against whom the Calcutta Police had filed cases of Obscenity and social disturbance had met Allen Ginsberg though all of them were in Calcutta.  Most of the critics

Most of the Beat writers and poets such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti visited other countries with the money they got from the sale of their books. They not only visited but stayed in foreign countries for a pretty long time.  None of the Hungries, except for Malay Roychoudhury and Pradip Choudhuri visited other countries. Malay Roychoudhury  got funds from his daughter and son to enable him to visit other countries. Pradip Choudhuri was invited by his French poet friends who funded his stay and journey.  Debi Roy ( Haradhan Dhara ) visited only Dhaka for a few days on invitation. Some of the Hungries did not get a chance to go out of West Bengal. The critics overlook this aspect when comparing the two literary and social movements.                                                                                              Subo Acharjee

The Beat writers all got good publishers right from the very beginning whereas the Hungry Generation writers did not get publishers even when they became old. Beat writers got City Lights Books, Grove Press, New Directions whereas the Hungry Generation writers had to pool money for publishing their own books and try to sell them. Most of their books never saw a second edition. Here are two comparable books overlooked by academicians.                                                                                                                  

The Beat poets and writers, almost all came from affluent background. The Hungry Generation poets belonged to very poor families, inasmuch as Haradhon Dhara ( Debi Roy ) who edited the bulletin lived in a slum and was a Dalit--- the first Dalit in history of Bengali literature to edit a powerful mouthpiece. Subimal Basak and Abani Dhar came from Backward Class. Subhas Ghosh and Saileswar Ghose belonged to Other Backward Class.                                                     Tridib                                                                                                   Samir                                                                                                         Pradip                                                                                                         Malay                                                                                                        Karuna                                                     

Most of the critics who talk about the influence of Beat generation on the Hungry generation poets of Bengal have not read the works of Malay Roychoudhury, Subhas Ghosh, Pradip Choudhuri, Subimal Basak, Subo Acharya, Saileswar Ghose and others. Those who write in English are completely Hungry-illiterate and even then they compare the Hungry generation with the Beat poets and writers. Most of the Hungry generation works have not been translated in English. In that case, how come they compare the Beats with the Hungries ?                                                                   Pradip Choudhuri on right. Arun Banik on left.                                             Arun Banik was killed by political goons.                                                                          

The Beat writers and poets were social dropouts, some evaded the Vietnam war and became Beatniks whereas the Hungries were not dropouts. The Hungries were from the cornered subaltern section of society, they rather wanted to be included in the Bengali culture. Hungries protested against the West Bengal and Indian Establishment by issuing manifesto, There has been no manifesto of the Beat generation. The Beats were not a cohesive group like the Hungries.                                             

It is really idiotic for some ill-educated academicians to compare the Hungry Generation poets and writers with the members of the Beat Generation. The poets of the Beat Generation came from an affluent society with metropolitan experience whereas the poets and writers of the Hungry Generation movement came from very poor background, some of them were  post-partition refugee families and did not have a place to stay and livelihood to earn. The Beats, when they went abroad, got dollars remitted to their accounts through the American Express whereas the members of the Hungry Generation had to sleep at station platforms and take bath at street corner taps when they came to Calcutta.