”Dracula” and Dracula in Bengal and in Bengali

Abstract

This paper, after listing some translations of Stoker’s novel into Bengali, chooses to focus on two adaptations which totally Indianize the novel and its characters, particularly the titular antagonist, placing them, in one case, in newly-independent India and Calcutta, and in the other, in an India and a Calcutta around two decades after the independence of 1947. In the process, the vampire is queered in both adaptations, and, in the earlier one, so are its human opponents, whereas the later adaptation follows a more homophobic opposition of a queer alien and unambiguously heterosexual humans, despite there being no major feminine presence in it. We attempt some deductions regarding why the two Bengali adaptors took their respective stances.