What is "prajapati"

In Hinduism, ' Prajapati' ( Sanskrit: ( IAST: )) "lord of people" is a group of Hindu deities presiding over procreation and protection of life, and thereby a King of Kings (Rajanya or Rajan). Vedic commentators also identify him with the creator referred to in the Nasadiya Sukta.

Prajapati, a novel by Bengali author Samaresh Basu caused sensation with its publication. It was first published in 1967 (1374 Bengali Era) in the Sharodiyo Desh special (page no 174-226), a well known Bengali monthly magazine, a presentation of the Ananda Publishers. This novel is about a young boy who is used as the premises to understand not only his background but of the society at large. Samaresh Basu narrates the novel in first person and uses flashback technique to articulate and stir events of protagonist's life within a short time limit of 24 hours or a day. The methodology of the novel reminds one of the famous Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. It was a young lawyer named Amal Mitra who first filed a charge of obscenity against the author Samaresh Basu and the publisher Shitangsukumar Dasgupta on 2 February in 1968 for the novel Prajaproti. Later the Government of West Bengal supported Amal Mitra and spoke against Prajapoti. The Lower Court gave the verdict that the book was indeed obscene and had no literary value whatsoever. The High Court went on to uphold the just mentioned verdict. After a long time of almost seventeen years, Prajapoti got rid of the stigma ‘banned’ after a verdict given by Supreme Court of India in its favour. Reportedly, Prajapati had been published by Ananda Publishers as a hard cover book before the charge of obscenity had been made against it. In its second edition in 1985 soon after the verdict had been overturned it made record sales. The 11th edition of Projapoti states that the first edition had printed 8800 copies but from the second through the tenth edition (from 1985–2003), the sales went up to 48,000 copies!