Naren Ray (1940 – 24 July 2003) better known as Sufi, was an Indian cartoonist with a career spanning nearly five decades, during which time he published political as well as children's cartoons in prominent Bengali magazines and newspapers. His role as a political cartoonist earned him more ire than dividends, while his work as a strip cartoonist was unique. His cartoons were followed by generations of Bengali middle-class people without ever knowing his true identity. He was a regular contributor to Shankar's Weekly, published by political cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai. Even though his works appeared exclusively in Bengali-language print media, his work had uniquely close ties to the leftist movement, rendering his drawings and ideas peerless.
Early life and education
Sufi was born in the district of Comilla, Bangladesh in 1940. His father worked in the police department and after independence relocated his family to Kolkata in 1948. Then a child, Sufi was taken out of school in Brahmanbaria, where he was in class four. He initially thought that they were going for a family trip and would soon return to what was then East Pakistan. Being unable to return to his childhood abode deeply distressed him. He later stated that he had never recovered from that jolt. The family shifted to Shibpur, Howrah in the Indian state of West Bengal. Sufi attended Dinabandhu Institution in class five. Formal studies were never very appealing to him and he taught himself, mainly by voracious reading. The eldest of five siblings, he had to start working in 1956, at age of 16, without graduating. While he offered private tuition to sponsor his reading habits and was also member of local libraries, he mostly borrowed books from acquaintances, finishing up to three a day. Sufi joined an art school in 1958 to pursue drawing and handicrafts. Personal and family problems led him to abandon the course before its completion in 1962, but he had decided to be a cartoonist.
Career
Naren Ray started drawing for magazines early. During his school days he and his mates from a library decided to publish a handwritten magazine, Koishorok. While he produced drawings and sketches for the periodical, fellow Shibpur resident and comic strip artist Narayan Debnath created the cover. He and Sufi would end up working with the same publishing house Deb Sahitya Kutir and Jugantar newspaper. These sketches followed the subject matter of a story or a poem. During this time, he followed the cartoon and comic columns in papers and periodicals including Jastimadhu, SachitraBharat, Achalpatra and Shonibaarer Chithi and took notice of the sarcasm and irony employed by the cartoonists of the day, namely Shaila Chakraborty, Rebatibhusan, Promoth Samadder etc. The popular sports magazines of the day, Gorer Maath and Stadium, were among the first places to publish his cartoons. By this time he had passed final exams and was drawing for Jastimadhu, Sangeetika, Jugantar and Basumati. He also drew few complete funny comics. His cartoons were first published in the magazine Swadhinata. One of his comic series was Raja (the detective kid) and Bagha (his dog) that was published in Kishore Bharati magazine.
The poverty, pain and suffering around him encouraged him. At this point he started drawing political cartoons for Swadhinata. One of the proprietors of the paper, Arun Roy, became a mentor who encouraged him to proceed with political cartoons. Roy also introduced Sufi to the Indian version of Punch, Shankar's weekly. Sufi was a regular contributor to the magazine until it closed at the time of the 1975 emergency. Although initially he drew under his real name, for his political cartoons he adopted pen names including Bini, Birinchi, Srigupta, & Pramila Roy.
During the 1960s, a women's magazine named Mohila was run from north Kolkata by Basanta Kumar Chattopadhyay. Sufi was invited to draw for that magazine provided he used a female identity. Sufi signed his cartoons as Pramila Ray, his mother's real name. Similarly, he signed all his works as Sanjay in Basumati and Jugantar during this period. He had the first experience of publishing a complete comic strip in Swadhinata's Sunday edition. Saotal Bidroho, drawn by him and written by Pachugopal Bhaduri was published as a serial in the paper. Sufi was to have a long association with both Jugantar and Basumati, which spanned more than 24 years until both papers expired in 1996.
Sufi
When he started drawing for the Communist party vehicle Ganashakti, he was advised by the editor to take the pen name of Sufi, associating him with asceticism and purity. He was harassed from time to time by his political opponents.