India offers to help Bangladesh restore Satyajit Ray’s home

India on Tuesday asked the Bangladesh government to stop the demolition of cinema legend Satyajit Ray’s ancestral home in Mymensingh and offered to help in the maintenance and restoration of the property.

In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reminded the interim government of the iconic status of the Rays in the “shared cultural history” of the subcontinent. 

“We note with profound regret that the ancestral property of noted filmmaker and litterateur Satyajit Ray in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, belonging to his grandfather and eminent litterateur, Upendra Kishor Ray Chowdhury, is being demolished,” the MEA statement said.

“Given the building’s landmark status, symbolising Bangla cultural renaissance, it would be preferable to reconsider the demolition and examine options for its repair and reconstruction as a museum of literature and a symbol of the shared culture of India and Bangladesh,” the MEA said, offering to cooperate with the Bangladesh government for the purpose.

The property, presently owned by the Government of Bangladesh, is in a state of disrepair. 

Earlier, media reports from Bangladesh said the ancestral house of the Rays, who hailed from Mymensingh in pre-1947 East Bengal, was being demolished to make way for a new structure. The property where Ray’s grandfather, the famous writer and publisher Upendrakishore Roychoudhury, had lived was taken over by the Government of Pakistan in 1947 and subsequently served as a centre for children’s education — Mymensingh Shishu Academy.