Portraits of Courage in Indian and Russian Literature

Portraits of Courage in Indian and Russian Literature is about four writers from India and Russia. Alexander Pushkin, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore and Alexander Solzhenitsyn are separated by different ages, different societies, different races and creeds. They are united by a universality of purpose – of protest against injustice and oppression.

All four could have led secure and comfortable lives but they chose danger, exile and even death to express their sympathy for the oppressed. All four upheld the grandeur of freedom. All four were men of courage.

Leela Moulik and Bela Mazumdar were sisters who composed the monographs on Bankim Chandra and Rabindranath Tagore in chaste Bengali. Their daughter/niece Aloka Moulik Chatterjee, historian and translator, translated them into English. Her sister Achala M. Moulik wrote about Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn.

While portraying the lives and works of the four authors the four gifted women have brought to life the tumult of other times.