Why Bangladesh razing Satyajit Ray's ancestral home is a shared cultural loss

India Today

16-07-2025

In the heart of Mymensingh in Bangladesh, a city steeped in undivided Bengal's rich cultural past, bulldozers have begun dismantling a monument symbolic of the subcontinent's artistic renaissance. The ancestral home of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury—zamindar, pioneering publisher, writer, painter and grandfather of legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray—is being razed by the interim administration to make way for a new semi-concrete structure.The decision has triggered diplomatic overtures, emotional appeals and widespread outrage, laying bare a deeper crisis: the erasure of a shared cultural inheritance.advertisementLocated on Harikishore Ray Chowdhury Road, the house stood on a 36-acre estate once alive with literary and artistic ferment. It was here that Upendrakishore—father of Sukumar Ray and grandfather to Satyajit Ray—envisioned and nurtured a creative legacy that would eventually transcend national boundaries. Often considered the father of children's literature in Bengal, his legacy is inextricably linked with the cultural imagination of the region.The estate wasn't just a residence. It was a complex that included a prayer hall, a workspace (the famed Kachari Bari), multiple ponds, gardens and a playground. It was also the spiritual and artistic hearth for a family that would go on to become synonymous with the Bengali cultural renaissance.
Upendrakishore's contributions to children's literature, particularly Tuntunir Boi, and his innovations in halftone printing were revolutionary. Sukumar Ray added to this inheritance with his absurdist verse and sharp satire in works such as Abol Tabol. Though Satyajit Ray never visited this ancestral home, it continued to shape his imagination, rooted as it was in the intellectual traditions his forefathers had built.In a reflective account, filmmaker Sandip Ray revealed that neither he nor his father, Satyajit Ray, had ever visited the ancestral home in Mymensingh. 'Neither Baba (Satyajit Ray) nor I ever saw the building in person,' Sandip said, noting that their knowledge of the house came only from photographs.During the making of his documentary on Sukumar Ray, Satyajit had initially hoped to include images of the ancestral home. To this end, he sent a close associate involved in his productions to Bangladesh to photograph the building. However, upon receiving the pictures, Satyajit was deeply disheartened by the structure's dilapidated condition. The sight of its decay led him to abandon the idea altogether.'Baba had wanted to use those pictures,' Sandip recalled, 'but after seeing the building in such a ruined state, he decided not to include them in the documentary.'Despite its significance, the property—abandoned for over a decade—had fallen into disrepair. The Mymensingh Shishu Academy, which operated from the building beginning 1989, vacated it in 2007 and shifted to a rented space. Local authorities now cite the building's unsafe condition as justification for demolition.Md Mehedi Zaman, the district's children affairs officer, confirmed that the decision to demolish the house was made by a committee led by the deputy commissioner of Mymensingh, Mofidul Alam. 'The house had been abandoned for 10 years, and Shishu Academy activities have been running from a rented space,' he said, adding that a new semi-concrete structure with multiple rooms will be constructed to resume activities on-site. The project, he insisted, had received necessary approvals and was being undertaken in accordance with official procedures.advertisementHowever, historians, poets and cultural activists across Bangladesh and India have condemned the move as short-sighted and culturally damaging. Sabina Yeasmin, field officer at Bangladesh's department of archaeology for the Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions, acknowledged that while the structure was not officially listed as protected, surveys had identified it as holding archaeological heritage value. Her calls for preservation, too, were ignored.India responded swiftly and emotionally. In a strongly-worded statement, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) expressed 'profound regret' over the demolition and extended technical and financial support to restore the property. 'Given the building's landmark status, symbolising Bangla cultural renaissance, it would be preferable to reconsider the demolition and examine options for its repair and reconstruction as a museum of literature and a symbol of the shared culture of India and Bangladesh,' the MEA said in a statement. 'The Government of India would be willing to extend cooperation for this purpose.'advertisementWest Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee also voiced concern, calling the news 'extremely distressing.' In a message on X, she wrote: 'The Ray family is one of the foremost bearers and carriers of Bengali culture. News reports reveal that in Bangladesh's Mymensingh city, the ancestral home of Satyajit Ray's grandfather, the renowned writer-editor Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, steeped in his memories, is reportedly being demolished. It is said that the demolition work had already begun.' Mamata urged the Bangladesh government's chief advisor Mohammad Yunus to take steps to conserve the property.This is not the first such episode involving a Bengali cultural landmark in Bangladesh. Just weeks earlier, Mamata had urged New Delhi's intervention after a mob vandalised Rabindranath Tagore's ancestral home in Sirajganj, following a dispute over a parking fee. That house, like the Ray mansion, had once served as an intellectual haven—visited often by Tagore and eventually converted into a museum.To demolish the Ray house is to overlook its intangible inheritance. This was no ordinary building; it was a crucible of ideas. It was where Bengal's modernity took root—an incubator for values of reason, art, and social reform, fostered through Brahmo Samaj ideals and disseminated through the pages of Sandesh, the children's magazine founded by Upendrakishore and later revived by Satyajit.advertisementThe Ray family was not a passive chronicler of the Bengali experience but one of its architects. Their works are foundational in West Bengal's education system and, despite not being formally prescribed in school syllabi, remain widely read and cherished in Bangladesh. This is a shared inheritance, not merely Indian or Bangladeshi.Yet that very inheritance now stands in peril. Just as the Rabindra Kachharibari was nearly lost to administrative apathy and public violence, the Ray mansion, too, risks being flattened into oblivion. Once gone, no amount of reconstruction will restore its authenticity or emotional resonance.As of now, sections of the building have already been demolished. Without urgent intervention, the remainder is likely to follow. India's offer stands, but no formal agreement has yet been reached. Bangladesh's interim government has so far remained unmoved by appeals—diplomatic or emotional.What is at stake is not simply the fate of a building but the preservation of a transnational cultural identity. In tearing down this house, a generation risks severing its link to the imaginative, reformist spirit that animated the Bengali Renaissance.advertisementThe demolition of Satyajit Ray's ancestral home—whether partial or complete—is not just about heritage lost. It is about memory forsaken. And in a subcontinent where identity so often hinges on remembrance, such losses are not just regrettable; they are irreversible.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends