Prithu Haldar

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA, maps and analyses how Bengali language and cultural expression are changing in the platform era (2020–2025), focusing on how creators, technologies, and institutions reshape vernacular registers, translation practices, and audience strategies. Prithu Haldar is the Coordinator of this project.

Prithu Haldar is a final-year PhD scholar at IIT Tirupati researching Indian cinema, avant-garde aesthetics, and magical realism. He has presented at the University of Oxford on vernacular reimagining of postcolonial literature, taught at Krea University, and published in reputable Bengali periodicals and academic journals, including BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies. Given his sustained scholarly interest in the evolution of media, aesthetics, and narrative forms, he is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The pandemic-era digital boom has accelerated the creation of Bengali content on platforms, producing new registers, neologisms, and audience strategies that challenge traditional gatekeepers such as print media and academic institutions. Because platform constraints, algorithmic economies, and translation technologies are reshaping how Bengali is written, spoken, monetised, and understood, there is an urgent need for a systematic study of this subject. The project’s “Three Engines” framework (Gatekeepers, Knowledge Producers, Practitioners) situates these changes historically and conceptually, arguing that practitioner knowledge- YouTubers, creators, and grassroots producers- must be treated as legitimate data and co-producers of scholarship. 

The research process is multi-format: it opens with a Digital Humanities workshop, runs a year-long monthly lecture series in Bengali, conducts in-depth interviews with content creators, and hosts a translation workshop to evaluate machine translation for Bengali. A hybrid academic conference and a bilingual digital repository will collate recordings, transcripts, reports, and translation metrics. Fieldwork will be coupled with institutional partnerships (e.g., IIT Tirupati; Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Kolkata; Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol) and will aim to produce usable resources- documentation, analytical reports, and an accessible archive- that sustain dialogue among scholars, creators, and Bengali-language publics.

The outcome of this project will be an inaugural online Digital Humanities (DH) workshop, a monthly lecture series, YouTube creator interviews, a five-day translation workshop, a one-day hybrid academic conference, and a bilingual digital repository website serving as a comprehensive digital archive. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA, along with the final reports, will include audiovisual documentation of workshops/lectures/conference proceedings; transcripts of 10 YouTube creator interviews; the translation workshop report; and comprehensive project documentation uploaded on the bilingual website.

This project aligns with the framework of IFA’s Arts Research programme, as it directly engages with how Bengali, as a language and cultural medium, is being reshaped in real time through the rise of digital platforms, AI translation tools, and creator economies. Unlike conventional language or media research, it treats content creators not as passive subjects but as knowledge producers and co-researchers.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

The Project is part-supported by BNP Paribas India.