Sekal Aar Ekal (Those Times & These Times) is Rajnarayan Basu’s sharp, unsparing, and sometimes humorous reflection on how Bengal – and India – changed under colonial rule. First delivered as a speech to university students in 1874, it moves between two worlds—Sekal (“those times”) under the early East India Company, and Ekal (“these times”) under the full sweep of British colonialism. With his dry wit and vivid storytelling, Basu walks us through the bustling lanes of old Bengal—past Sanskrit pandits and Persian scholars, wandering bards and neighbourhood storytellers—while criticising the rise of rote learning, the decline of true spiritual sentiment, and the slow fading of a once vibrant cultural life.

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Basu is part chronicler, part critic: lamenting the physical and moral decline of his contemporaries, the blind imitation of Western customs, and the slow fading of native arts and language. Yet for all his sharpness, Basu ends with hope, urging his countrymen not to lose heart. Fearless, candid, and full of life, Those Times & These Times is as much a conversation with our own era as it is a record of his.
In addition to being rich source of history, Those Times & These Times is startlingly relevant today. In an age of rapid modernisation and cultural uncertainty, Basu’s warnings against blind imitation, loss of language, and hollow notions of progress strike closer to home than we might expect. His voice deserves to be heard again—not as nostalgia, but as critique, comedy, and counsel. This translation is only a beginning, inviting readers to reflect on the dance between continuity and change, and perhaps find not just answers, but new questions for the bewildering times we live in.

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