While the rest of India, from around 1915 was inspired by the ideals and activities of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a large part of Calcutta's political culture remained separate from the national mainstream. It was the cult of the bomb that captured the imagination of Calcutta's youth and middle class.

Secret societies and associations flourished; young men armed with crude pistols and home-made bombs made British officials their targets. Often they missed their targets and killed innocent Britons. They were arrested and hung, or sent off to the prison at the Andaman Islands. Large sections of Calcutta's middle class never really accepted Gandhian forms of resistance to British rule. Calcutta was thus never really the forefront of either the Non-Cooperation Movement or the Civil Disobedience Movement. It can be argued that Calcutta's distance and alienation from "national" politics began from this period. The one consistent voice against the trend of armed resistance was that of Rabindranath Tagore who in his novels like "Char Adhaya" and innumerable essays argued against this mode of opposing British rule.

Subhash Chandra Bose

The entry of Japan into the second World War and Japan's advance into South East Asia created a sense of fear and threat in Calcutta. The city was bombed by the Japanese air force in 1943, the affluent of the city moved out to places like Madhupur and Deogarh. Resistance to fascism brought together intellectuals, writers and artists of various different ideological persuasions. This led to the formation of the anti fascist writers and artists organisation. It added a new dimension to the city's cultural life. Two events unconnected with the war produced a major stir in the city. One was the mysterious disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose from his house in Elgin Road where he had been held under house arrest on 17th January, 1941. The other was the death of Rabinbdranath Tagore on 7th August, 1941.

The most important event of this period had nothing to do with nationalist politics. This was the Great Famine of 1943. Scholars like Amartya Sen have shown that the famine was not caused by an actual scarcity of food. The British government created an artificial scarcity which meant that the poor people could no longer afford to buy rice. The result was a massive migration of the poor and the hungry from the villages into Calcutta. Such people moved around the city begging not for rice but for 'phaan', the water in which rice is boiled. Thousands died on the streets. This was Calcutta's first exposure to death as a mass spectacle. It was a trauma that left an indelible scar on Calcutta's culture and consciousness.

The famine of Bengal

The immediate response to this trauma came from artists and creative people. The most notable of these was the play "Nabanna" produced by the IPTA and directed by Shombu Mitra and Bijon Bhattacjarjee. The play not only captured the horror of the famine but also set new standards of stage production. It became a landmark for all subsequent plays and theatre groups. Two painters, Jainel Abedin and Somnath Hoare represented unforgettably the famine in their sketches and canvases. Sunil Janah, a photographer, captured in his photographs the human suffering that the famine perpetrated. The photographs taken by photographer Sunil Janah, captured the human suffering which the famine perpetrated.