1923: Key Events

• C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru start the Swaraj Party to enter legislative assemblies. It achieves wider Muslim and Hindu support than the Congress, but by 1928 the Party represents mainly conservative Hindu landlord interests in the communally charged Bengal.

• Aparesh Chandra Mukherjee’s Karnarjun at Calcutta’s Star Theatre confirms the commercial theatre’s dominant language, influencing much of the early Bengali cinema.

• The Hindustan Times is launched.

• The Bengali literary journal Kallol, edited by Dinesh Ranjan Das, is first published and becomes the foremost literary journal of its time, lending its name to the Kallol Group.

• One of the early Bengali film weeklies, Sachitra Sisir, edited by Bijoyratna Majumdar, contains film and theatre reviews as well as production news.

• The élite literary journal Bharati (founded in 1877 and regarded as the journal of the Tagore clan) carries a serialised history of Bengali cinema.

• Entertainment tax of 12% is levied in Bombay.

• The Saurashtra? Kinematograph is set up in Rajkot.