The Essays of Chitta Ranjan Das on Literature, Culture, and Society: On the Side of Life in Spite of

This volume brings together the essays of Chitta Ranjan Das (1923-2011), a creative experimenter and writer, on literature, culture, life and the human condition. It presents a different vision and version of the post-colonial imagination and social and literary criticism which is rooted in soil, soul and cosmos. While a majority of post-colonial discourse is still predominantly metropolitan, giving us very little discussion on creative endeavours in different language spaces of India and the world, this book presents radical new pathways and creative collaborations which break conventional boundaries between the periphery and the centre, literature and life, mother languages and metropolitan languages, and East and West. It offers a new archaeology of knowledge as a regenerative archaeology of life where knowledge, action and devotion come together for new explorations and transformations. It broadens and deepens our universe of discourse on literature, philosophy and world transformations, and is a monumental contribution to alternative imagination and cosmopolitan experimentation.