One of the most enduring stories of Indian cinema, both mainstream and regional, has been Devdas.* Originally a novella written by Bengali author Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1917, the story of 'Devdas' has been adapted and reinvented across time and cultures, to suit cinematographers' tastes and meet commercial demands. The focus of the narrative is Devdas, a scion of an aristocratic Bengali family. Devdas is a complex character cut in the mould of an individuated, Promethean-like Romantic-rebel figure; an aristocrat at odds with the materialist legacy of his land-owning family, a lover who cannot commit, and a repressed, politically disoriented rebel who meets a tragic end of his own making.
The first official screen adaptation, a silent film directed by Naresh Chandra Mitra, appeared in 1928. However, the first widely-influential version appeared in Bengali in 1935, directed by Pramathesh Barua, the doyen of Bengali cinema. Barua himself played the lead role and instantaneously made an impact as the love-torn tragic hero. For decades afterwards the persona of the fictional Devdas was associated with Barua himself. Barua followed the success of the 1935 Bengali version with a Hindi adaptation the following year, with K L Saigal in the lead. Box-office sales soared. Since then there have been numerous adaptations emerging from many of India's film making centres – at least one Tamil version (dir. P V Rao, 1936), Assamese (dir. P C Barua, 1937), Malayalam (dir. Crossbelt Mani, 1989), two Telugu versions (dir. Vedantam Raghavaiah, 1953 and Vijayanirmala, 1974), and two further Bengali adaptations (dir. Dilip Roy, 1979 and Ashim Samanta, 2002).
The most prominent version after Barua's masterpiece was undoubtedly Bimal Roy's 1955 Hindi film, starring Dilip Kumar. Much later, Devdas appeared again, with mainstream Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan starring in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2002 version. And more recently again, Anurag Kashyap's 2009 adaptation was named Dev.D, with Abhay Deol in the lead. At least two Pakistani versions have been made, directed by Khwaja Sarfraz in 1965 and Nadeem Shah in 2010, and two Bangladeshi versions, both made by Chashi Nazrul Islam in 1982 and 2013.
What accounts for the immense popularity of this narrative, across the ethno-linguistic clusters of Southasia? There is no simple answer. The influences of the original Bengali novella have faded as subsequent versions have shared intertextual references with each other. An interesting tapestry has been created, as in the remakes the respective auteurs kept the basic flow of the narrative consistent, while changing the social and political backdrop in line with the changing times.