| Author | Samaresh Basu |
|---|---|
| Language | Bengali |
| Published | 1967 |
| Publisher | Ananda Publishers |
| Publication place | India |
Prajapati (lit. 'Butterfly') is a Bengali-language novel that was written by Samaresh Basu. It was first published in 1967 in Bengali monthly magazine Sharadiya Desh, which was published by Ananda Publishers. The novel is about a young boy who is used as the premises to understand his background and the society in which he lives.
On 2 February 1968, a lawyer named Amal Mitra filed a charge of obscenity against Basu and the publisher Shitangshu Kumar Dasgupta. The Government of West Bengal supported Mitra and spoke against Prajapati. The lower court ruled the novel is obscene and has no literary value. Calcutta High Court upheld the lower court's verdict. After seventeen years, Prajapati was unbanned after a ruling by the Supreme Court of India in its favour.
Ananda Publishers had published Prajapati as a hard-cover book before the charge of obscenity was made against it. In its second edition in 1985, soon after the verdict was overturned, it made record sales. The 11th edition of Prajapati states the first edition had a print-run of 8,800 copies but the second-to-tenth editions (from 1985 to 2003) sold 48,000 copies.