Basanti: Writing the New Woman

Serialised in Utkala Sahitya between May 1925 and November 1927 and published as a book in 1931, Basanti is a landmark attempt at writing a new kind of novel in Odisha. It is new at least in three senses. It is a product of a well thought out plan for collaborative writing. It is a novel with a focus on women. It is a novel of ideas. Nine young authors, six men and three women, belonging to the ‘Sabuja Age’ in Odia literature, a short-lived but immensely creative and restless period of roughly ten to fifteen years, came together to write this novel. Written against the backdrop of the political and social ferment of the time, marked by Gandhi’s nationalist movement and the rising regional aspiration for state formation, Basanti is the first fictional declaration of the independence of the Odia woman. It is also the first and the last exemplar of the collective novel in Odisha.