Satyajit Ray on the sets of Pratidwandi (1970).
| Photo Credit: Nemai Ghosh/ Satyajitray.org
Raising concerns about the ancestral home of Satyajit Ray’s family being demolished in Mymensingh city, Bangladesh West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) appealed to the Government of Bangladesh to protect this heritage home.
Observing that the Ray family is a custodian and carrier of Bengal’s cultural heritage, Ms. Banerjee also requested the Indian government to also look into this matter.
The West Bengal Chief Minister noted that the ancestral home of Satyajit Ray’s family, which is closely associated with his grandfather, the renowned writer and editor Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, is apparently being demolished.
“The demolition work had reportedly begun. This news is extremely saddening,” she said, adding that Upendrakishore was a pillar of Bengal’s Renaissance.
Abandoned for 10 years
According to the Bangladesh Department of Archaeology, the house was built more than a century ago. After the partition of 1947, the property came under government ownership. Media reports in Bangladesh pointed out that the house has been left abandoned for ten years and a “Shishu Academy’ will be constructed in the place of the building.
Last month, a political row erupted in West Bengal over the attack on an ancestral house of Rabindranath Tagore at Sirajganj in Bangladesh, with both the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) highlighting the issue.
West Bengal Chief Minister on June 12 wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him “take up the matter very strongly with the neighbouring country’s government, so that no stone is left unturned to swiftly bring to justice the perpetrators of this heinous and mindless act”.
Published – July 16, 2025 06:40 am IST
