Archives at Sanhati: Porichoy at Sanhati

Archives at Sanhati: Porichoy

Archivist: Soumya Guhathakurta, Sanhati

Update May 1: 1933 1st Issue, 1934 1st Issue
Update April 27: 1933 2nd Issue.

About Porichoy – The Early Phase

On his return from Europe in 1929, the poet Sudhindranath Dutta felt the need for starting a ‘review’. The purpose was to strengthen the bonds that Bengali literature had developed with literature of the world. The poet was promised help in this endeavor by friends who were established litterateurs or connoisseurs of the craft. Finance was arranged from family quarters. The editorial board of the ‘review’, which was named Porichoy, consisted of the likes of Charuchandra Datta, Satyendranath Bose, Subodhchandra Mukhopadhyay, Prabodhchandra Bagchi, Dhurjati Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Nirendranath Roy, Girijapati Bhattacharya and Sudhindranath Dutta. Very soon a circle of intellectuals in Calcutta clustered around Porichoy, including people like Abu Sayid Ayyub, Bishnu Dey, Hirendranath Mukhopadhyay, Annadashankar Ray, Budhadeva Bose and many more.

The first issue of Porichoy was published in 1931. From 1931 to 1936 Porichoy was a quarterly. From 1936 onwards Porichoy became a monthly. The second issue of Porichoy printed an adulatory note from Rabindranath Tagore to the editor. In fact, Tagore wrote poems, essays and book reviews for Porichoy during the period 1932 to 1942. The liberal Sudhindranath Dutta allowed the control of Porichoy to pass on to ‘Anti Fascist Writers Association’ in 1944. It may also be said that this signified the shift of the periodical’s control to Communists and their sympathizers. However, Porichoy always acknowkedged its intellectual debt to Sudhindranath Dutta and even as late as 2001 there was a special issue to commemorate the poet’s birth centenary.

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