orig. Bankim Chandra Cattopadhyay
born June 26/27, 1838, near Naihati, Bengal, India
died April 8, 1894, Calcutta
Indian novelist.
Chatterjee was educated in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and served as a deputy magistrate in civil service for many years. His first notable Bengali work was Daughter of the Lord of the Fort (1865). His epoch-making newspaper, Bangadarsan , serialized some of his later works. Though his novels were considered structurally faulty, his contemporaries saw him as a prophet, and his valiant Hindu heroes aroused great pride and patriotism. He helped create the Indian school of fiction and established Bengali prose as a literary language. Chatterjee is considered the greatest Bengali novelist.