Old Man River

2010-09-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

bandits, comintern, mn roy, borodin,route army

Old Man River

2010-09-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

2010-09-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

SOCIAL BANDITRY

This is the second time I have come across the words mentioned in the above caption. First time , another time, another article where Comintern’s ( third communist international) intervention preceding the dangerous days of Long March of Chinese Eighth Route Army was diccussed. A commission consisting of Borodin and M. N. Roy was sent to China. The activities of Chinese guerillas drew this comment Social Banditry from them. This time we are reading Ramchandra Guha’s Social Banditry in the Telegraph dated December 21st. This time Guha’s source authority is E.J.Hobsbawm. Thus the words appear to be pretty ancient. Mr. Guha’s erudition, excellent grip over narrative writing is admirable. But the experience and realization of veteran foot soldiers like us of what you may call revolution is pretty different.

Incidentally, curiosity urged me to look for some information about M.N.Roy. There are some small write ups and some booklets. There is one biography written by one Samaren Roy There are many exciting information about M.N.Roy .During my boyhood days as a school boy I occasionally noticed in Kolkata some wall posters by Radical Democratic Party. Not much activity otherwise was felt. As I grew up I became prejudiced against M.N.Roy. Our main grouse was Roy was against Lenin, mainly his Colonial Thesis. Although he visited China as a member of the commission sent by Comintern it was never very clear organizationally with which country’s communist party he was involved. He spent a fairly large part of life working along with the communists of Mexico. Also he paid long visits to other Latin American countries, the U S A, Paris , Japan, a few South East Asian countries. But I must admit that I did have a lingering curiosity about the man who could stand up to Lenin and dispute his colonial thesis, or be a party in describing Chinese guerilla warfare as social banditry. When Lala Lajpat Ray was in the U S A M.N. Roy was quite friendly with him. Lala even helped Roy with money, in terms of those days a lot of money.

Anyway, in going into a partial profile of M.N.Roy we do not want to digress from our main concern the precise purpose of describing extreme militant peasant movements as social banditry. A European author in his contemporary ambience may consider peasant uprisings as banditry but we beg to differ . The armed rebellion of Telengana peasants against the oppression of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the tebhaga movement of share croppers of Bengal or the tanka movement of the peasants of Mymensingh district bordering the Garo hills and all other militant peasant movements even in the heyday of past feudal domination is a feature though replete with bloody conflicts, killings, plunder etc. cannot be termed as banditry. It is only when forces not belonging to mainstream peasantry in the name of most modern world outlook of Marxism try perversely to hijack these struggles to seize state power the question of resisting or accepting it arises. In fact this could not only be termed as banditry it can be described as loathsome large scale deception.

In this context in India nearly half a dozen communist parties in the name of Mao, Naxalbari etc. are exactly engaged in such an activity. Extreme right wing politics and the extreme left wing politics as described earlier together in reality contribute to one and the same thing: disruption of real revolutionary process among the masses, stalling the process of spread of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. It is a fact that working class or peasants by themselves cannot generate within them the ideas of social transformation. For this they have to acquire the correct historical perspective. This of course is provided to them by educated classes, thinkers, intellectuals etc. In this way the educated intellectuals. become natural associates of the forces of social transformation. On the other hand sections of these educated classes are heavily utilized by the ruling elite to disrupt Sthe toiling masses from getting attracted to revolutionary ideas . A vast force of artists, illustrators, writers, authors,pseudo scientists, economists etc. are mobilized to bend the masses to the ideas of statusquo. Another thing. With the tremendous rise in productive forces aided by technical progress a large section of people of people engaged in industrial and business processes are really living quite comfortably and are definitely fostering the idea of not getting embroiled into “dangerous” activities of social transformation. The attitude is" why buy trouble?" It is only when the devastating cyclical crisis lead to a catastrophic disruption of various hunky dory of ambition of sections of upwardly mobile classes upsets set in and rethinking and an honest analysis of history surface.

There is no shortcut or made easy to a revolution. I w as rummaging through some dicoloured old letters of Mani Singha. In one of them written from jail, where he was kept for awhile after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he wrote there is a mighty important factor ruling the space between sowing and harvesting . That important factor is a blend of patience and fortitude. We have to go by the rules.

SOCIAL BANDITRY

This is the second time I have come across the words mentioned in the above caption. First time , another time, another article where Comintern’s ( third communist international) intervention preceding the dangerous days of Long March of Chinese Eighth Route Army was diccussed. A commission consisting of Borodin and M. N. Roy was sent to China. The activities of Chinese guerillas drew this comment Social Banditry from them. This time we are reading Ramchandra Guha’s Social Banditry in the Telegraph dated December 21st. This time Guha’s source authority is E.J.Hobsbawm. Thus the words appear to be pretty ancient. Mr. Guha’s erudition, excellent grip over narrative writing is admirable. But the experience and realization of veteran foot soldiers like us of what you may call revolution is pretty different.

Incidentally, curiosity urged me to look for some information about M.N.Roy. There are some small write ups and some booklets. There is one biography written by one Samaren Roy There are many exciting information about M.N.Roy .During my boyhood days as a school boy I occasionally noticed in Kolkata some wall posters by Radical Democratic Party. Not much activity otherwise was felt. As I grew up I became prejudiced against M.N.Roy. Our main grouse was Roy was against Lenin, mainly his Colonial Thesis. Although he visited China as a member of the commission sent by Comintern it was never very clear organizationally with which country’s communist party he was involved. He spent a fairly large part of life working along with the communists of Mexico. Also he paid long visits to other Latin American countries, the U S A, Paris , Japan, a few South East Asian countries. But I must admit that I did have a lingering curiosity about the man who could stand up to Lenin and dispute his colonial thesis, or be a party in describing Chinese guerilla warfare as social banditry. When Lala Lajpat Ray was in the U S A M.N. Roy was quite friendly with him. Lala even helped Roy with money, in terms of those days a lot of money.

Anyway, in going into a partial profile of M.N.Roy we do not want to digress from our main concern the precise purpose of describing extreme militant peasant movements as social banditry. A European author in his contemporary ambience may consider peasant uprisings as banditry but we beg to differ . The armed rebellion of Telengana peasants against the oppression of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the tebhaga movement of share croppers of Bengal or the tanka movement of the peasants of Mymensingh district bordering the Garo hills and all other militant peasant movements even in the heyday of past feudal domination is a feature though replete with bloody conflicts, killings, plunder etc. cannot be termed as banditry. It is only when forces not belonging to mainstream peasantry in the name of most modern world outlook of Marxism try perversely to hijack these struggles to seize state power the question of resisting or accepting it arises. In fact this could not only be termed as banditry it can be described as loathsome large scale deception.

In this context in India nearly half a dozen communist parties in the name of Mao, Naxalbari etc. are exactly engaged in such an activity. Extreme right wing politics and the extreme left wing politics as described earlier together in reality contribute to one and the same thing: disruption of real revolutionary process among the masses, stalling the process of spread of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. It is a fact that working class or peasants by themselves cannot generate within them the ideas of social transformation. For this they have to acquire the correct historical perspective. This of course is provided to them by educated classes, thinkers, intellectuals etc. In this way the educated intellectuals. become natural associates of the forces of social transformation. On the other hand sections of these educated classes are heavily utilized by the ruling elite to disrupt Sthe toiling masses from getting attracted to revolutionary ideas . A vast force of artists, illustrators, writers, authors,pseudo scientists, economists etc. are mobilized to bend the masses to the ideas of statusquo. Another thing. With the tremendous rise in productive forces aided by technical progress a large section of people of people engaged in industrial and business processes are really living quite comfortably and are definitely fostering the idea of not getting embroiled into “dangerous” activities of social transformation. The attitude is why buy trouble? It is only when the devastating cyclical crisis lead to a catastrophic disruption of various hunky dory of ambition of sections of upwardly mobile classes.

There is no shortcut or made easy to a revolution. I w as rummaging through some dicoloured old letters of Mani Singha. In one of them written from jail, where he was kept for awhile after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he wrote there is a mighty important factor ruling the space between sowing and harvesting . That important factor is a blend of patience and fortitude. We have to go by the rules.

2010-08-20T23:45:00.001-07:00

2010-08-20T23:33:00.000-07:00

2010-08-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

2010-08-09T23:34:00.001-07:00

2010-08-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

2009-11-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller. First published 1949.

I never liked the name Janaiker Mrityu (Death of Someone) given to the Bengali version of the play. A salesman in a capitalist society is not just someone. He is a unique entity encompassing a unique set of virtues and vices not to be found in earlier economies. For my own purpose I quote from the play:

Willy- Figure it out. Work of a lifetime to payoff a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

Linda-Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.

Linda spoke like that, okay. World over, on the contrary, all the countless Lindas think differently. They want to have houses of their own. It is instinctive since they themselves are houses. Their bodies are houses to bear, feed, and nurture the embryos of generations of mankind. Linda was only consoling Willy Loman over the inevitability of break up of a family, over leaving a house to nobody. Obviously, Linda could not mean it sincerely. And that is only natural. This Death of a Salesman, as I progress afresh for umpteenth time I am stunned by the overwhelming depth of Arthur Miller notwithstanding the canards and gossips crafted over the media. The theme is lasting for sixty years with clear signals of lasting for a century unless not “existing” socialism but real socialism starts controlling productive forces and the economy. The play, for once, strives to bring an individual out of stereotype when and where Charley says one must have something to sell otherwise you are destined for the black hole.

It is astonishing and amusing also to view us in the mirror. With what a tremendous load of illusion we continue to live and suffer only to see us dramatized and look at each other and realize that the fellow beside me is also similarly suffering and hoping and waiting for a morning with a flood of sunshine.

And the pride, arrogance and their futility when viewed in the context of relationship between parents and offspring overpowers us with such sadness. Father figure is a miniature hero and he is worshipped forgetting that the heroes too have feet of clay. Loman is continually failing and boasting and getting beaten and ending up in ridiculous womanizing in full view of his elder son Biff. When the wreckage of this son rebels in frustration he threatens him despairingly. Really, quite moving and relevant till today.

FESTIVAL FLAVOURS

2009-10-03T00:41:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (7)

In the mind’s eye frames move backward. A serpentine coloured streak, mostly red and green , is moving forward along the earthy brown bridle path between the dense and dazzlingly green tea bushes over the undulating low hillocks of Surma valley tea gardens of Cachar area in India, Sylhet and Chittagong of present day Bangladesh. Tea garden labourers , mostly women were going to join the Durga Puja. Their own complexion, predominantly glistening ebony black among all the surrounding colours with their own defiantly bright red saris under a magical cloudless blue sky left me with a loner’s happiness which a loner can only enjoy. In fact, my first conscious feeling of a Durga Puja was gathered from the tea garden Durga Pujas. Almost all tea gardens had English managers and under managers In the matter relating to Durga Puja they stretched their generosity to the farthest limit. Every garden used to have community Natch Ghar (dance hall). That was the main venue of the puja.

This colourful procession I was watching from a slow moving train’s window while on way to visiting a friend in a tea garden. This friend was in the Royal Indian Navy in the British days, an accused in the naval mutiny and demobilized after the Second World War, one among the seven million made unemployed at that time. He had a sprawling ancestral property on the fringe of a famous tea estate. He dabbled in what was called progressive political activity. He was supposed to help me in my feeble attempt at trade union activity among the garden labourers in the dangerous days of Pakistani regime. He asked me to stay with him during the pujas. And that once a

gain threw me back into the folds of my childhood tea garden pujas. The colour, illumination by incandescent lights, sound of many hundred voices of men, women and children, absence of microphone and loud speakers , swirling dust of red earth, performance of plays ,mostly mythological by itinerant jatra parties of local origin on four side open stage. The actors had to have enormous lung power and ability to gesticulate powerfully to captivate the thousand strong audience throughout the night. And the overwhelming smell of biris, combined with that of sweets fried and made syrupy in oil and sugar of dubious quality. A painter could be very happy with all this.

The only jarring note was struck by my former seaman friend with his weakness for ganja and bhang, the potent resinous extraction of different grades from cannabis you smoke or mix with sweetened milk and drink.
But all the same childhood returned for a couple of days. We would throng around in our not so clean half shirts, shorts, frocks in the wealthy neighbor’s house and watched with intense curiosity and surprise how the kumars (sculptors) were building images of Durga and her cohorts. First, split bamboo pieces tied together with hay fastened over, then plastering with adhesive black clay brought specially from river bed which had to be kneaded with finely cut jute for more cohesion, We, all Apus and Durgas of the locality watched how carefully and truthfully the sculptors tried to shape the female and male anatomy of the Gods and Goddesses .Then with paints how a piece of hessian sheet soaked in clay turned in to a beautiful sari with borders of wonderful flower pattern. In our contemporary innocence we earnestly believed in miracles and divine deliverance.

This innocence was only relative. Every age has its own variety of childish innocence. When we also grew up later under the shadow of newly acquired arrogance of skepticism, argumentativeness and disbelief this turned into a ridiculous nothing. But that smell of shefali, view of white kash on the banks of mirror-calm rivers under an azure blue sky with drum beats around and the image of gorgeous goddess Durga always lead back to a wonderful feeling of happiness.

Image courtesy Internet: Apu and Durga, still from "Pather Panchali", a film by Satyajit Ray

OF BOOKS AND READING

2009-09-23T00:35:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (6)
Speaking about oneself is one of the greatest pleasures. One of the greatest self indulgences one may say half deprecatingly. A high pitched love for words, sentences etc. and a frenzied reading habit develop in my kind of people exceptionally early and leave them hopefully or , if one would say hopelessly dependant upon them. What starts as a desultory way of reading, sometime romance, sometime poetry, sometime thriller, sometime racy trash, sometime really serious things, through the churning of time evolve in to something which gather around it elements of little wisdom, little knowledge. People like us usually remain content with whatever pebbles we are able to collect from the shores of what Newton described as ocean of knowledge and wisdom. Let us only be watchful that we are not turning away from those shores.

Familiarity with alphabets or words or reading and writing or even excellence in them hardly ensure against the deviation from the path of reason and logic. The powerful weapon provided by books still remains the most powerful and basic. The astonishing development in electronics is continually providing us with startlingly smarter and smarter way of acquiring knowledge. But the books are very personal. Read if you wish. Do not read if you do not. Closing or opening a book it is all up to you. Written words, in the history of human civilisation, quietly and steadily has contributed so much that no other development can come any close to this. I am no Lord Chesterfield’s son whose father could boast that he had given his son the best education that money could buy. We had very little money but a disproportionately large assortment of books scattered around an unimpressive modest house filled with an electrical impulse for reading. It was very different from what is called education for which none of us had any eagerness. Of course, plenty of urge was there to fetch a degree and a steady job. That was all about education, acquiring some comprehension of formal patterns that come along with formal education. This cannot be described as enthusiasm or respect.

In the thirties and forties of past century Bengali middle class families produced such youths. Tagore blazed the trail and during last ten years of his life he even asked the upcoming generation to defy him as an icon. We can once again try to understand Abhik in his "Rabibar". He was fearless that a change could sweep him aside. Books are books, inert by themselves.

But the electronic media channels have completely opened up itself to the upsurge of retrogression. Books are books. They cannot be changed. They can only be burnt. They can be lost for awhile only to reappear afresh from the ashes. Books cannot be effectively made vehicles of reaction and retrogression however much a section of writers long to make themselves commodities in the market place. In the existing economy all of us have to become commodity willingly or unwillingly. There is no escape from this. The struggle that a writer wages before being swallowed by market economy driven by big money and even after being swallowed register the marks of his artistic honesty, sensitiveness and greatness. Books and writings retain enduring marks of this struggle. This is one of the greatest points why books are different.

This is the backdrop. Greatness or great things do not pop up in a void. There is a void created by a dying culture The behemoth of electronic media is thriving upon this and feeding their huge clientele on a steady diet of foolish entertainment of mindless sex, of heaps of naked bodies wrestling with each other, gory violence, ridiculous obscurantism and all that.

This business of sex is very interesting.

These frenzied efforts to market sex have led to an insane fear of losing sex. The increasing ascendancy of sex prophets in media is a clear indication of this. There is nothing shameful or fearful about sex. Citing examples from only Kamasutra has become very ordinary and monotonous. Better read Kadambari of Bana Bhatta or Kalidasa’s Kumara Sambhavam and learn from the simmering warm sex of Mahashweta or Mahadeva’s coital pleasure with Parvati how passionately sex was described about a thousand years back.

Since book reading is not a guided tour conducted by a dolled up dud on the TV screen, you are left with full liberty to play with and fondle your imagination with any number of colours and tunes you wish. Books offer you this since it has inherent respect for every human soul. And it is a book that created Don Quixote by Cervantes, the unmatchable joke from the fantasy world of a book worm. In fact only books can do this. Over indulgence and dependence upon gadgets may lead one to a darkened world without books.

The pleasure and benefits derived from the ever evolving gadgets are ephemeral. Technology is being used more to push back and vulgarise all progressive cultural efforts. The first book I read with complete attention in my childhood was Ramayana by Krittivasa -- all the seven cantos stopping only for food and sleep. I am grateful to my book-loving parents till this ripe old age.

Image courtesy Internet: Dali's Don Quixote

WRITER'S WORLD

2009-07-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (5)

In my earlier blog I quoted a two and half page excerpt from The Hungry Tide of Amitav Ghosh. Portrayal of some characters by some authors appear to be very similar (not in every respect, of course) to someone very close to us. In this context Piya reminded me of my daughter for her stubborn idealism, never say die attitude. This may not attract many who are after a soft life of affluence and comfort. In the instant case the author did not compromise with cheap ridicule the yearning of those who opt for such lives. Rather, his admiration was quite prominent. That is what attracted me towards these lines.

Those who are devoted to various art forms they are not concerned with a dissertation on political economy. He or she might have sound or unsound political or philosophical ideas and this may or may not affect his or her creative products, literary or otherwise. We saw Beethoven effusive after Napolean’s take over of Austria. This single fact did not lower his greatness. We found Tagore charmed by Mussolini’s fascistic ideas till Rolland removed the spell over him. We know Knut Hamsun was frankly a fascist politically but his creativity was not burdened by that. Nearer home we saw Sarat Chandra lecturing Hindu communalism and at the same time creating wonderful character of Gafur in Mahesh. While discussing Herzen or Shaw Lenin took this dialectical appraisal of creative world. Most of our confusions stem from an obstinate abs olutism. In such a world, to quote Herzen, “we are not doctors, we are the disease.”

I am not highly conversant with Amitav Ghosh’s works. I have heard a lot about him, read only a couple of his books. These were all inspired by the fact of his being an award winning celebrity. I do not have competence to judge him. In fact I feel so far as lives and happenings of estuarine Bengal are concerned Manik Bandopadhya wrote a better book. I mean his Padma Nadir Majhi (the boatman of Padma). Still, I liked Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide for its own qualities. Manik Bandopadhya could have written in English for he was quite competent in English language and literature, or he could have himself translated the book. In the unfortunate narrow confines of those times this did not happen. One more thing. In literary appreciation the reader looks for synchronization and harmony between content and form. A writer may not be able to achieve this always inspite of his best efforts. Manik Bandopadhya died with this anguish.

REMINDED ME OF MA

2009-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

At midday with the sun blazing overhead Piya took a break and came to sit beside Kanai in the shade of the awning. There was a troubled look in her eyes that prompted Kanai to say, “are you still thinking about the forest guards?

This seemed to startle her. “Oh no. not that.”

Then?

She tipped her head to drink from her water bottle. “The village,” she said wiping her mouth,” she said, wiping her mouth.’ Last night: I still can’t get it out of my head- I keep seeing it, again and again, - the people, the flames. It was like something from some other time-before recorded history. I feel like I will never be able to get my mind around the –‘

Kanai prompted her as she faltered. “The horror?

‘The horror. Yes. I wonder if ever I will be able to forget it?

‘Probably not’
‘But for Fakir and Haren and the others – it was just a part of everyday life, wasn’t it?’
I imagine they’ve learnt to take in their stride, Piya.They have had to.’
That’s what that haunts me’ said Piya.” In a way that makes them a part of the horror too, doesn’t it? Kanai snapped shut the note book: ‘to be fair to Fakir and Haren, I don’t think that it’s so simple, Piya. I mean aren’t we a part of the horror as well? You and me and people like us?’

Piya ran a hand through her short curly hair, ‘I don’t see how.’

‘That tiger had killed two people, Piya’ Kanai said, ‘and that was just in one village. It happens every week that people are killed by tigers, how about the horror of that? If there were killings on that scale anywhere on earth it would be called genocide, and yet here it goes almost unremarked: these killings are never reported, never written about in the papers. And the reason is just that these people are too poor to matter. We all know it, but we choose not to see it. Isn’t that a horror too- that we can feel the suffering of an animal, but not of human beings?

‘But Kanai, Piya retorted, ‘everywhere in the world dozens of people are killed everyday- on roads, in cars, in traffic. Why is this any worse?
“ Because we are complicit in this, piya. That’s why?
Piya dissociated herself with a shake of her head “I don’t see how I am complicit.’

“Because it was people like you,’ said Kanai, ‘who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for human costs. And I am complicit because people like me-Indians of my class, that is, -have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favour with their western patrons. It’s, not hard to ignore the people who’re dying- after all they are the poorest of the .poor. But just ask yourself whether this would be allowed to happen anywhere else? There are more tigers living in America in captivity, than there are in all of India- what do you think would happen if they started killing human beings?

But Kanai, said Piya, ‘there’s big difference between preserving a species in captivity and keeping it in its habitat.’
‘And what’s the difference exactly?’

‘The difference Kanai,’Piya said slowly and emphatically,’ is that is what is intended-not by you or me, but by nature , by the earth, by the planet that prevents us from deciding that no other species matters except ourselves. What will be left then? Are’nt we alone enough in the universe? And do you think it will stop at that? Once we decide we can kill off other species, it will be the people next- exactly the kind of people you’re thinking of, people who are poor and unnoticed.’

‘That’s very well for you to say, Piya- but it’s not you who is paying the price in lost lives.’

Piya challenged him.’ Do you think I wouldn’t pay the price if I thought it necessary?’
‘You mean you would be willing to die?’ Kanai scoffed,’ come on Piya’
‘I’m telling you the truth,Kanai’ Piya said quietly,’ if I thought giving up my life might make the rivers safe again for Irawaddy dolphin, the answer is yes, I would.. But the trouble is that my life, your life, a thousand lives would make no difference.’

‘It’s easy to say these things-‘

‘Easy?’ There was a parched weariness in Piya’s voice ‘Kanai, tell me, do you see anything easy about what I do? Look at me. I have no money, no home and no prospects. My friends are thousands of kilometers away and get to see them may be once in year, if I am lucky. And that’s the least of it. On the top of this is the knowledge that what I am doing is more or less futile.’

She looked up and he saw that there were tears in her eyes. ‘There’s nothing easy about this, Kanai, she said. ‘You have to take that back’

He swallowed the quick retort that comes to his lips. Instead, he reached for her hand and placed it between his own. ‘I am sorry’,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ I take it back.’

She snatched her hand away and rose to her feet. ‘I would better get back to work.’

He called out as she was going back to her place,’ you are a brave woman. Do you know that?’

She shrugged this off, in embarrassment. ‘I am just doing my job.’

(excerpts:The Hungry Tide.Amitav Ghosh.Pp 300-302)

TWENTYFOURTH APRIL

2009-05-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (4)

There are so many allusions about prisons, arrests etc. that it may naturally lead to some questions: where, why etc. Briefly, I was a political prisoner in East Pakistan (the then) for being a member of the communist party of East Pakistan, which almost always was a banned organization there. During the period lasting from 1949 to early 1956 I was thrice imprisoned for a total duration of six years one month. This explanation, I hope, will remove most of the confusions.

Today is 24th April. On this day in 1950 prison guards aided by hardened criminal convicts fired upon us, severely assaulted us leading to death of seven inmates and grievously injuring almost all of the thirty nine prisoners inside the ward. Two or three decades ago memorial meetings were held in Kolkata and elsewhere in honour of those who sacrificed their lives in this brutal killing. Gradually, with the disappearance of people of those days, waning of memory and crowding in of scores of more tragic events these memorial assemblies are naturally on the way out.

Leaving aside the post 2nd world war politics prevalent at that time developments inside Rajshahi Central Jail would be an interesting study. At the other end of the spectrum Burmese communists, particularly the white flag were waging a terrible war of insurgency against the alliance led by Aung San. Indonesian communists led by Aidet and egged on by Chinese communists were fighting the then Indonesian military led regime of Suharto ending ultimately in a horrible disaster for Indonesia. Indo China (present day Vietnam) were fighting French America combine and winning dramatically. In this backdrop of ferment powerful sections of Indian communist movement decided that an armed struggle could be waged against big bourgeois landlord collaborators backed by Anglo American imperialism and could be won decisively. By hind sight you can today describe this as infantile impulse but this kind of thinking definitely influenced us. We thought that if the prisoners could be made to rebel and a massive jail break could be staged there would be an explosive situation .Beyond that we did not want to think. To this end we set to work.

We started organizing. We established excellent contacts with greater sections of prisoners and undertrials. Total population inside the jail had been definitely more than two thousand five hundred .Our ward committee, or rather the jail committee used to publish regularly every week a neat and beautiful handwritten manuscript magazine Mazdoor . On this occasion a special issue of Mazdoor with several copies was published. Front page screamer’s free English translation would be something like” stand up in anger like Yusuf Beg” (Yusuf Beger Moto Rukhe Daraon). After recounting the heroic sacrifice of Yusuf Beg a demand for the thorough reform of jail manual was raised. Yusuf was a convict serving life imprisonment, who attacked and killed the English superintendent of the jail during Sunday routine inspection parade. Yusuf Beg had many serious grievances which were ignored and he was regularly harassed and abused. Yusuf was tried and executed.

The memorandum of demand s were mainly drawn up ,prepared and circulated by us. Apart from many demands for the improvement of living condition, food, clothing etc the vital demand of paying wage to the convicts serving rigorous imprisonment made the authorities see red. Those who have a little idea of a large prison should be well aware of large departments of cane crafts, tailoring shop, handloom,powerloom, leather craft, smithy, press, and many others,- an impressive assortment of small scale industries run by the labour of convicts . Till twenty five years or so ago even in independent India British sponsored jail manual was followed. According to this manual no wages were paid to the convict labour and they were never allowed to buy their small needs like tobacco etc from their personal cash lying in the jail office. Prisoners placed these demands and resorted to en masse indefinite food refusal. In the evening whole prison used to roar with slogans raised by the prisoners. This was certainly unprecedented. The line of administration from Dhaka to Rajshahi central jail was aflame with anger and anxiety. This was a situation termed as mutiny in the jail manual. A clash with some political prisoners leading to firing and deaths is relatively a tame thing compared to this highly volatile situation. Cases of clashes between political prisoners and guards had happened in the past but a largescale mutiny of the prisoners left the the authorities in a desperate state. The prison authorities finally capitulated and promised to look into the grievances of general prisoners. The mutiny of the prisoners was naturally over because the authorities had conceded to favourably consider their demands. Prisoners in general were not interested in a foggy idea about a revolution.

At this point prison authorities and the government in Dhaka planned to teach us a lesson. They decided to disperse us in smaller groups in to segregated enclosure. Supposedly dreaded ones to be confined to fourteen cells. They were aware that clashes would take place and a bloodbath was in their plans. It was 1950 and both Bengals were swept by the second biggest communal carnage. Looking back some of us till this day wonder in such a situation how could we organize a prison mutiny of such a dimension. Those were the days of such communal frenzy that a state frankly established on the basis of religious communalism verging on a fundamentalist attitude could rather decide to wipe out this small group of communists and left wing elements, seventy per cent of whom in the religious sense had a Hindu background They thought but failed to start a prisoners’ riot of a communal nature. Instead in the hot morning of 24th April authorities staged a blood bath in the Khapra ward when the political prisoners were just getting ready for their breakfast of chapatis, vegetables and tea.

The word Khapra in North Bengal dialect means red tiles. Khapra ward was a red tile roofed bungalow looking prison ward meant for accommodating defaulting landlords held under Bengal regulation III of late nineteenth century. These prisoners were rajahs and maharajahs and the lavish expenditure after them was borne by the government. It was quite a beautiful building with barred French windows numbering around ten or twelve. Khapra ward had another name Diwani because prisoners of Diwani (land revenue related) cases were held there. Surrounding was spacious with half a dozen impressive looking Neem trees and a very big well full of clear, cold and wholesome water. It was difficult to imagine that on this sunny hot morning there would be murders in this beautiful place. At worst we bargained for a tough physical conflict but never a shooting of buck shots from bolt action rifled muskets at practically point blank range because there never was a need of such a firing upon unarmed prisoners inside a barrack and that too without any warning. Mr. Bill,the jail superindeant, a huge anglo indian extremely enthusiastcally led the whole operation. Our plan was if the authorities applied force we would capture the officers and force them inside the barrack.Mr. Bill could manage to escape but two deputy jailors were catured by us and they were also injured in the ensuing indiscriminate firing.

Rest is history. Seven killed and every one injured, some very seriously. A few were crippled for whole life. Buck shots or riot cartridges as called by British soldiery fired from a long distance result in lighter wounds. Fired from close range they create ugly and fatal wounds. Yes, we were fearless. This fearlessness demands rich tribute. But it should be remembered that fearlessness alone is not the only capital with which revolutionary battles are fought. As for infantile impulses probably none of us is immune to it. Nobody is born old. Infantilism and mature behaviour they all join together to create the wonderful thing that is called stream of life.

REFLECTIONS ON A HANGING

2009-04-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (3)
_________________________

Curt commands rang out –“attention”, “order arms”, “present arms” British musketry drill cautions, still in vogue in India and Pakistan, then a brief and shrill bugle blast from the prison tower shattered predawn dark stillness for a minute, then muffled roar of a few cars departing woke up a few of us. Our ward was close to sixteen feet high main wall. We could see the armed sentry standing at the tower situated over the prison office. Every two hours the guard was changed. This guard had to ring the round brass bell hanging there every hourly.

These noises were something new and while turning in early dawn slumber some of us remembered and sat up erect with a shiver. The condemned man had surely been hanged. For about nearly a week words were doing the round that the condemned prisoner’s mercy petition had been rejected and on arrival of exact order of execution he would be hanged. In spite of all slovenliness and anomalies in prison administration these things are treated with reverential awe. Whole process starts with absolute secrecy and silence, just twenty four hours earlier the condemned man is clearly and quietly informed by the highest jail authority about the exact date and time of his hanging. He is also asked about his last wishes. An effort surely is made to fulfill all reasonable wishes. From the day before a squad of select warders are placed around his cell. All these are done in complete secrecy. Most inmates in the prison remain ignorant of the developments. We too had no idea. This condemned prisoner was twice brought to our ward under guard to discuss drafting of his mercy petition with a few lawyers we had among us. It was quite a large ward which sometimes could accommodate nearly seventy political detenues.We had observed this condemned man‘s coming and going. He was a pleasant looking big man; quite tall for an average Bengali. In an ugly dispute over some land he brought out his gun and shot dead a couple of people of opposite party. We were not aware that his execution was imminent.

Next day afternoon a senior warder was on duty in our ward. He was extremely distracted with red eyes from lack of sleep. We were otherwise on friendly terms with this man. From him we got the whole story of execution as this warder was in the special guard. He had been a witness to quite a few hangings. It was always shocking to him. Some walk to the gallows as if in a trance. Some are in terrible panic at the last few moments. They cry out, weep loudly, and empty their bowels and bladder. They have to be literally dragged to the hanging platform. Chief district judge, the district police chief, top jail officials and the special guard of warders constitute the official side. Of course, a medical team headed by the district civil surgeon should be present to ensure that the condemned man is brought alive over to the execution platform and after the hanging is over the dead body is formally examined and certified as dead. After everything is over a special gang of hardened convicts is brought in to clean the body and to cover it with a shroud. And the executioner or the jallad in prison lingo, who pulls the lever to separate the boards under the feet of the condemned man for a free fall and tightening of the noose on his neck, remains the only active man throughout.

These elaborate details have been discussed variously in different accounts. I was watching the warder .As if witnessing the horrible ritual of killing a man is like being affected by the contagion of spiritual and physical disintegration of a fellow human. After I recovered reasonably from the serious musket shot injury suffered during Rajshahi Central Jail firing I was released from the jail hospital and put in the cell no 14 of a cluster of fourteen cells. I stayed there for a couple of weeks and then removed to cell no. 9. The bizarre joke on me was this cell 14 was exclusively meant for condemned prisoners. As there was pressure on the administration about accommodation for a few days I was put in the cell no. 14. This cell was in no way different from other cells of the cluster. Only it was highly segregated and a few steps away from the execution platform. A small wooden door led to the site of hanging from the cell.

Cell no. 14 usually remained empty. Other thirteen cells were occupied by us, the political prisoners detained without trial, -- mostly communists and other left wing elements. After initial few months of near solitary confinement we were allowed to go out of cell enclosure for a walk and exercise at the large space beside the sixteen feet main wall. It lasted from four to six PM. At one end was the large concrete bound well over which gallows were erected when occasion arose. At other end was the corner of the main wall. We used to sprint or walk over this space till lock up time. On other occasions we used to sit over the broad rim of the death pit and gossip. Certainly the sight of this well and the proximity of the condemned prisoner’s cell used to arouse varieties of emotions in our minds. It was here had been executed Peer of Pagaro, a rebel who fought the British bravely and, also Yusuf Beg, the Pathan convict who killed the English superintendent of the jails with a jagged piece of glass. Above all, it is never possible to shake off the gloomy feeling and shame at man’s invention of such an elaborate ritual of killing a fellow human.

THE CROSSING

2009-03-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (2)

This name I have not forgotten till today. Mir Hussein. Those were the days of 1948-49. Many a night he rowed me across Surma. From Baithakhali side of the river to Mallikpur. Deep in the night in some one’s boat stolen for a few hours. My crossing over, he would with care and secrecy take the boat to its proper place. He was not that capable to manage the theft of a boat. Of course, he was given to stealing. Small thefts. Driven by poverty and hunger he stole paddy or some such things from the houses of rich peasants. He did not own any land. He worked in other people’s land on daily payment basis. Payment was mostly in kind, paddy. In those days cash transactions were very scarce. So, naturally, ploughing, transplanting, watering (in Buro paddy growing plots), harvesting, winnowing, drying and storing the paddy in mud plastered bamboo storages, these kept him honestly occupied. These over, people like Mir Hussein had no work, therefore, no earning.

Mir Hussein is probably not alive now. Probably, he was a little older than I. Ebony black, wiry and well-muscled man. This was the first living thief in my life, who was telling me stories of small thefts, while rowing across flooded Surma on a dark heavily clouded night.

Later in life I had seen hundreds if not thousands of thieves, dacoits and convicted armed robbers. One rape accused was transferred to district jail along with me under an escort of three armed policemen. Same escort for two means a sort of cost-cutting. This man had been committed to district session’s court for the seriousness of his offence. If the court decided against him he would have to serve a minimum term of five years of rigorous imprisonment. It was an upstream long steamer journey. Any company, a policeman or even some one accused of an offence was welcome. For a long while the rape accused was trying to convince me that he was in a frame-up. Who knew? It could be that he was telling the truth. In an abject rural ambience more than half a century ago such things used to happen. Being in a family of lawyers I heard bits of conspiratorial talks among the clients. If other things did not stand, a rape or a molestation charge could be slapped. We grew up a little precocious naturally. Women were even available to testify. In those days standard they were handsomely paid. No stigma sticks permanently. A few of them, if they had wished, could be rehabilitated, married even, and, could raise a family. Time is the greatest healer. And the people who engaged them were quite powerful, socially and economically.

To the district jail were brought political prisoners from other smaller custodies. There used to be a period of one month’s isolation, jokingly described by us as baptism. I was kept in one of the thirteen cells, which were called hospital cells because these were in the jail hospital compound. Ten of these were occupied by hopeless and dangerous mentally deranged patients, quite a few of them with a history of manslaughter. Only three of us, two dacoits and me were normal people, who were kept in other three cells. Other ten cells were always locked up except when the occupants were given some food and washed. Nights in the cells enclosure were horrible with nonstop yelling, shouting and other noises pouring out from cells containing the insane. As a matter of fact, they were continuously making terrific din. We three were allowed to be out for a few hours, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. We three non-lunatics were otherwise friendly, used to talk among ourselves about our lives and various things.

These dacoits were quite professional people and if occasion demanded they could become fiercely cruel. One from Barisal district was the senior. One day he showed his trick. He took his right palm near his mouth and threw out from an artificially created cavity in his throat a few pieces of gold and precious stones, smiled, and swallowed back again. These jail birds used these to bribe warders and even officials for various advantages, even in procuring help for escape. I do not know whether nowadays these throat cavity treasuries are still prevalent because political and financial connections make quite a few criminals inside jails very powerful. Often a comfortable prison life for a period serves for them the purpose of a perfect refuge.

Another character I perfectly remember -- an extremely cruel and powerfully built convict hailing from the Chakma tribe of Chittagong Hill Tract who had been assigned with the task of washing the deranged occupants with the aid of a high-pressure hose pipe. His favourite pastime was to press the nozzle of the hose into the mouths or noses of those poor insane to the point of suffocating them to death. The popular idea was that a mad man never caught cold; if one could be made to catch a cold, he would be sane once again. This was a revoltingly cruel sight and there happened to be quite a few spectators, a number of warders among them. One day I spontaneously protested and from the look of that Chakma convict I was perfectly convinced that if at any time he could lay his hands on me it would be my bloody end!

The aggregate of these fragments of experiences led me over from usual ordinariness to the vast open meadow of unusual extraordinariness.

RICH BLEND

2009-03-15T00:41:00.000-07:00

FROM THE NOTE BOOK
Bangladesh Rifles headquarters is at Pilkhana, Dhaka, where the recent mutiny and gruesome killings took place. It is also close to Dhanmandi. Whole of Eastern Bengal, now Bangladesh, together with a part of Indian state of Assam , whole of present day West Bengal, Orissa and a part of present day Bihar constituted Sube Bangla of the Mughal Empire. Roughly , a suba was like a later day British administrative province. Mughals initially placed a subedar in these subas for administration, military affairs and revenue collection. Subedars generally were from the army. In the time of Mughal’s decay these administrators were described as Nawabs and Sube Bangla’s capital was at Murshidabad. These Nawabs started betraying increasing independence when they realized that the Delhi emperor’s grip is weakening. Another Nawabi domain sprang up in Dhaka after Murshidabad started declining after the Battle of Plassey, 1757.

Notwithstanding all these political events, landmarks within the region with their Farsi, and in a reduced scale, Arabic nomenclatures stayed throughout centuries, through British imperial days and even today. So, the Pilkhana, the parking place of war elephants, Topkhana, the parking place of batteries of cannons, Baroodkhana, the magazine lingered on till today.

Thus , I used to wake up in a vacant shop at Kazir Bazaar, get out for toilet in a masonry rubble called Baroodkhana and take my showers under spilled water of a very big water supply tank at topkhana, little bothering about Barood or Top of bygone days. Then once again back to Mamu’s snacks-cum-tea stall for my daily chow of very greasy paratha and equally greasy khasi gosht, cooked last evening. Very stale and delicious. Then take out my rickety bicycle and out thanking the Kazi of some centuries back for ordering erection of this cluster of shops, one of which was providing shelter to an anti-state commie, marked prominently in police records. Neighbourhood people took me for a police spy and left me unbothered. Then I would be through Zindabazar via Bandarbazaar, leave the cycle somewhere and board a bus of pre-Second World War vintage of Chevrolet or Dodge make. This would clutter along and stop for half a minute before the Dargah of Peer Shah Zalal, and Muslims or Hindu drivers alike uttered their silent prayers. Then I would get down somewhere and get in on a gashti country boat tied to a pole at a river bank and row out for some place. Many years afterwards it dawned upon me gasht in Farsi meant patrols. Those boats were designed for police patrols in the riverine countryside.

I had no idea of Farsi but my grandfather had. He was a renowned mokhtar in that part of our district with a fairly good grip over Farsi. This was the language used abundantly blended with local languages or dialects in law courts and Hindu lawyers were quite familiar with Farsi, even its script. Life at that time surely had been a grandeur of rich blend.

ON BEING JUDGEMENTAL

2009-03-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

While I was trying to understand the following something written by Arthur Miller somewhere sometime—“…He was disintegrating. You seem to be alive in those days was to feel certain communal passions which everybody on the left and all the artists felt….that the country had come to a halt, .so to speak. The powers that be are morally bankrupt. The only alternative was to the explosion of authority in the outside classes, the lower middle classes and the working class. They were going to restore honour to the human race. Odet’s career starts fundamentally in1935 it’s over by 1940---the years of the depression outcry. As soon as life got more ambiguous, which soon happened, his style seemed to be inappropriate……….” (Arthur Miller talking or writing about Gifford Odet), Dr. Rudrangshu Mukherjee popped up in his essay on Victor Kiernan in the Telegraph of 22nd February, 09. Beside Dr. Mukherjee’s elegant, rotund and pedantic English Arthur Miller appeared disheveled, rustic and scratchy. Most probably Arthur Miller was speaking. I could not form a fuller idea about Gifford Odet try as I might. It could be that Odet was an eminent actor in films in those days. I only vaguely remember certain comments on Odet by Satyajit Roy in a small book of his titled probably Our Cinema Their Cinema. It was written after his visit to US and Hollywood.

Gifford Odet is not the point. The point is why an impressive section of the generation under consideration became left or got attracted towards Marxism. That is what Arthur Miller tells us while discussing Gifford Odet. And that is what Dr. Mukherjee misses or glosses over. While discussing the life of Kiernan he seems to be discussing the activities of a few complicits in a folly. That is why inspire of his halting way of speaking Arthur Miller touches a cord in our hearts, hearts of foot soldiers dreaming about a revolution.

More significant is Arthur Miller’s use of the word ambiguous without wasting time to describe his own version about the situation. The temptation to describe a situation which, some people feel, in a straightforward manner sometimes make a description clumsier instead. There are certain events which become more eloquent when contradictions are displayed. Today, confronted with a bigger depression than 1929-30 certain assessments demand a reappraisal. My personal feeling was that this hunky dory offered by technology, gadgets, outsorucing, handsome salary etc.and the culture centering it is going to dominate throughout my life time. Therefore farewell to all those heavy stuff of serious music, .poetry, painting, pure physics, pure mathematics etc. Chances are that I may prove wrong. So much degeneration is not quite natural. Day of judgement can wait. As a historian Dr. Mukherjee can wait a little before discovering the causes. Classical explanations may not be dumped urgently.

2009-03-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

I HAVE DIED IN VIETNAM

2009-02-01T06:54:00.000-08:00

I HAVE DIED IN VIETNAM

But I have walked in the face of the moon

I have befouled the waters and tainted the air of a magnificent land

But I have made it safe from the disease

I have flown through the sky faster than the sun

But I had idled in the streets made ugly with traffic

I have littered the land with garbage

But I have built upon it hundred million homes

I have divided schools with my prejudice

But I have sent armies to unite them

I have beat down my enemies with clubs

But I have built courthouses to keep them free

I have built a bomb to destroy the world

but I have used it to light a light

I have outraged my brothers in alleys and ghettos

But I have transplanted a human heart.

I have scribbled out filth and pornography

But I have elevated the philosophy of man

I have watched children starve from my golden towers.

But I have fed half the earth

I was raised in a grotesque slum

But I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence.

I live in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history

But I scorn the ground I stand upon.

I am ashamed

But I am proud

I am an American.

(Published sometime in 1976 in Time Magazine with 25,000 requests for reprint)

MOMENTS OF TRUTH

2009-01-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

Several things are happening. After more than half a century Nazim Hikmet has been declared an honoured national poet by Turkish government. So far as I remember Nazim Hikmet died in exile in the then Soviet Union. He was seriously ill. What can be the explanation of this sudden reevaluation of Nazim.May be Turkish government are looking at the past happenings in the history from a different angle,or, it could be that Nazim Hikmet dead is no longer a danger and in view of popular sentiments a little accommodation can be offered to him. In any case we are happy that Turkey has honourably rehabilitated her great revolutionary poet. We remember with what great pride and emotion while in Pakistani jails we used to read and recite Nazim Hikmet. How inspired we used to have been.

From mid twentieth century to its end the church ,particularly the Roman Catholics told the world that Galileo was true in propagating Heliocentric theory and Darwin was perfectly valid in establishing the theories of natural selection and evolution in his Origin of Species. Calumny and humiliation were heaped upon truth for centuries. Ultimately moments of truth appeared with a thunderclap.

Lenin began his State and Revolution with an anecdote.In those times anti Marxists were praising Marx sky high and condemning the followers of Marx. Lenin concluded that in his death Marx was believed to have become harmless.So put an hallow around his name and praise him in order to mollify the ardent followers of Marx.

DO YOU SAY WEDDING?

2009-01-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

K.P. Nayar appears to have been greatly relieved after his recent Caribbean round. In those parts imperialism, working class, words like these, appear in discussions like the old days. He started with the objective of showing how effective are the Venezuelan diplomatic actions and simultaneously held an overview of the political happenings in the Latin American countries. For more than last fifteen years words, terms connected with Marxian political economy have become passé to the blue eyed boys of the recent breed of journalists. This is in reference to his Unusual Wedding on the ninth page of The Telegraph of 10th December, 08.

Opportunism is a poor choice to avoid the travails of the path of reason Long before the great revolution in France, Americans fought British imperialism and proclaimed the Declaration of Independence. Decades earlier before the Bolsheviks routed the Czar Mexican working class and toiling masses staged a socialist revolution .Of course, ultimately it was destroyed by the ruling classes. The point is not actually finding out who was the first. This is not a race to become a first boy. The fact remains that revolutions take place. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. Residual signatures remain enduring for centuries. Bonapartism could not finish off republicanism, or, science based atheism, or, nearer to home metric system for lineal, weight wise and all kinds of measurements and all that stands upon logic and mathematical reasoning. Great revolution of France advanced human civilization exponentially in spite of gory slaughter it entailed, in spite of it devouring revolutionaries in hundreds in guillotine.

Similarly, the revolution staged by Russian Bolsheviks in October, 1917 although fell through after more than seventy years of existence could not eliminate the contradictions those foster the revolutions. It is therefore very natural that revolutionary theories along with their jargon continue to be voiced to the great distress of reactionaries or renegades.

WHY DO I WRITE?

2009-01-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

Why Do I write?
-------------------------------

Why do I write? Bcause I cannot do otherwise.
Romain Rolland
Then Romain rolland went on to describe for whom he was writing and also the objective behind his writing.A contemporary eminent intellectual visiting Rolland described Rolland's house. To him from outside the house appeared like Rolland himself,-rugged and ordinary. As you enter the house your impression starts changing just like as you start talking to him or starts reading his works Rolland's great heart and mighty mind starts unfolding before you.

USHA PARINAYA.an ankia drama

2008-12-29T06:29:00.000-08:00

We had been to a cultural function, a drama performance by second year students troupe of national school of drama, Delhi. It was held at Rabindra Bhawan. Beautifully enacted on the basis of Madhab Kondoli's ankia nat Kumar Haran. Enjoyed the performance immensely.We were four Krishna, Nina, Shamik and myself. while returning home we were very happy pondering over the promise offered by such fusion drama.28th evening remains memorable.

IN THE SHADOW OF FAMINE

2008-12-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

A little before the Pujas of 2006 my daughter visited us in Kolkata. She decided to go for a dinner Bengali style in a much advertised Bengali eatery "Bhajahari Manna". We were seven or eight there. My wife, son, his wife and little daughter, my daughter, myself and another family consisting of a widowed mother and her son and daughter, very close to us from the days of my political activism. The eatery, an extremely cramped outfit with a list of elaborate delicacies of Bengali cuisine on a blackboard hung up on the wall. No printed menu is presented. Occasionally a man gets up and wipes out with a duster an item or two which have been devoured by the eaters already. Two French ladies were sitting beside us on the narrow seat, apparently enjoying hugely the food and the ambiance. Everything was perfectly Bengali. Noise, light, crowd everything.

I suddenly had a desire to find out my bearing. My school days, a part of it, was spent in this neighbourhood. It was 1944 .The shadow of famine, destitution, the Second World War, sandbagged baffle wall, overwhelming black-out nights... were in a deep embrace with Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) life. In the midst of this came world’s most devastating famine. Five million perished within less than two years. The eatery where all this eating was going on in great gusto where after a week Kolkata’s one of the grandest Durga puja, Ekdalia Ever Green club’s Puja was going to be performed, there existed a patch of triangular green fenced off with iron spikes with a small opening. There were a couple of swings and a few wooden benches. People, particularly the elderly and the children used to spend sometime here in the afternoon. Then from some where people started pouring around this what was then called Temporary Park. Some already dead, some were dying. A few who could manage to move, went out routinely for begging, not rice, but for "fan" the slightly starchy water that's released when rice is cooked. People, generally had lost the generosity of parting with a fistful of rice. It was durviksha or famine, when beggars are driven away. Hordes of people, indeed mere processions of skeletons wrapped in skin were moving about in search of food. A mature woman and a man were indistinguishable from secondary sexual features, because there was none that was visible. Everyday they were dying around Temporary Park, every where, in all places. All such places were reeking with a strange smell that only can emanate from dead and drying human bodies. I had a feeling this smell was there all over the country. It was years afterwards that I could forget that particular smell.

Never again I saw such a sight in my seventy-odd years of life. Kolkata was roaring around with American left-hand drive open-hood jeeps, well fed US troops, African-Americans among them a remarkable sight at that time. Gariahat as well as other Kolkata markets were also well stocked with food. Middle and upper class Calcuttans were collecting their requirements with wallets full of war-time paper currency. Only, mindlessness had climbed to a horrible height. As if these deaths and destitution were of no consequence. Famine became only a word for academic discussion. Such things will pass was the attitude. But, although small, a determined band of people were fighting this degeneration. With whatever they had, they plunged into famine relief work. Jainul Abedin’s famous drawings and paintings, Sunil Jana’s wonderful photographs, Bijon Bhattacharya’s plays, Nabanna and others, Jyotirindra Maitra’s Nabajibaner Gan and a plethora of other works tried with steeled determination to stave off demoralization. Then there was the flower of India’s humanism -- Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA), Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association. It is true that with only relief, songs and dramas you cannot reverse this massive torrent of famine and deaths. But yet this effort galvanized into a robust movement for restoration of self esteem, dignity and whatever that was still good within us. It had a highly humanizing effect. Outstanding political individuals, singers, artists, photo journalists, all came together. Their songs, plays, poetry sessions, speeches, wonderful posters prepared inexpensively but with deep passion traveled across cities, villages, and everywhere. The great tragedy had united all shades. In the backdrop was the worldwide antifascist unity of humanity. It was a golden time. People were ready to give every bit of best things they had.

I did not see the Indian freedom movement-era Dundee March, Non-cooperation or Civil Disobedience movements. But what I saw in this resurgence remained the abiding resource throughout my whole life. Just when the independence movement was getting into full throttle culminating into revolt in the Royal Indian Navy, that glorious feeling was snapped. Vicious communal riots cast its shadow all over the country. Horrible slaughter, history’s largest exodus, the country parted into two hostile entities. The moment of glory came within attainable reach and departed without anybody regretting it. Life became mundane with basketful of convoluted philosophies. For the middle classes there no longer existed any noble agenda.

Big degree, big job, big money. The ashes of burnt dreams filled up the air.

Well, at the restaurant we visited, meanwhile the food had arrived. Lovely boneless pieces of Hilsa steam-cooked in mustard paste and mustard oil garnished with green chillies. The aroma of Dehradun rice filled the air. A glass of whiskey would have been very satisfying .What else? Memories still lingered.

Photo from Internet. See economist Amartya Sen's book on the topic: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=FVC9eqGkMr8C&dq=amartya+sen+famine&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

RATAN TATA's OPEN LETTER-A FEW THOUGHTS

2008-11-05T07:49:00.000-08:00

Ratan Tata’s open letter (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081017/jsp/frontpage/story_9980686.jsp) to the citizens of Bengal, published in most of the dailies of West Bengal on 17th October last has definitely created an interesting situation. After the stun wore off it was found that most of the few reactions that came out were of mute sort. Let us not worry much with the contents of the letter. At different times Ratan Tata made many such statements. What is remarkable this time is Ratan’s frank show of interest in West Bengal’s politics. Very few people in this country who roam around the world of high capital find this activity interesting. Ratan Tata apparently belongs to this minority group. Ratan Tata heads world’s one of the most important capitalist organizations. It can hardly be expected that he would unnecessarily indulge in infantilism of getting pleasure from letter writing. He is one of the most erudite businessmen of India. He spent lots of years at one of the best universities of the USA, entry to which is not governed by donations from paternal inheritance, maternal uncle’s pull or Arjun Singh’s Scheduled caste quota. Entry to which is very strictly on merit. It is to be noted that on the same day Cornell University’s web site came out with the news that Tata Education Trust has donated to Cornell University a grant of 50 million dollars. 25 million for a research in depth on India’s food production problems, nutritional problems and problems related to hunger in India. Other 25 million for enhanced scholarship and assistance to Indian and other deserving students joining the university. Mr. Tata was an outstanding alumnus of Cornell.

Here no paean is intended for Mr. Tata. Let us take a look at the things from a classical angle. By all parameters Ratan Tata is a bourgeois. A bourgeois is the representative of the newest mode of production, capitalism has thrown up .Let us be very clear bourgeois is not an abusive term, as some half baked Marxists with a dismal sense of history wants to suggest. Whatever science and history we are dabbling with are the results of six hundred years of bourgeois development. Abut a decade or two back I suddenly had a feeling that different editions of Communist Manifesto bore the subtle signs of predilections of the individual editors in different editions. Not major occurrence, but very important to take note of. After the words “hitherto existing society” (page 2, paragraph 1) some editions do not care to bear the footnote mentioning Morgan’s reference to primitive communistic society. In some editions in the concluding paragraphs there are lines suggesting that confronted with the insoluble contradictions presented by the existing mode of production some sections of enlightened bourgeoisie may cross over to the cause for a change as demanded by the working class. In some editions we do not find such lines.

There is a possibility that there were some such lines. It does not compromise the contentions of the manifesto. There are myriad sections of capitalists who keenly follow the developments in the workers’ movements. We read in Howard Fast’s Being Red a few American industrialists who were in the same ship while sailing to England asking Howard Fast whether he followed the Wall Street Journal regularly. While Fast confessed that he did not they tell him that they regularly followed the Daily Worker the mouthpiece of the American communist party? Even in this age of bourgeois decadence there are elements of bourgeoisie who could be concerned about the future of mankind. And Mr. Tata could be one of them who are concerned about West Bengal. There is no cause of uproar. The contradiction is that Ratan Tata is not addressing the Bengalis of Bengal renaissance period. He is addressing a people smitten with history’s most touching tragedies. His efforts become pointless in the face of the dialectics of the situation, which he fails to appreciate.

CALAMITOUS MEDIA MANIPULATION

2008-10-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Few days earlier I was listening with horror a news casting in Indian national TV channel. The Newsreader was saying that there had been communal clashes between Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants and indigenous people resulting in half a hundred deaths and hundreds injured. Along with that thousands of cases arson and looting were also being reported. My horror was not confined to deaths, injuries etc. This is commonplace all over the world, particularly in our country. What surprised me was the callous way of naming the religious and ethnic identity of rioting parties. It is a longstanding practice among media community, buttressed by various national and state level laws, to describe the riots as group clashes. It is not that by calling these group clashes essentially make these anything else. Riots remain riots. What is important is media is not stoking any sentimental or emotional situation. It tries to remain objective and responsible. Whatever be the opinion or views of a newspaper or a TV channel its stance remains unaffected.

A well-known columnist writes about the aftermath of October revolution of 1917 as comical socialist experiences. As corollary all the unfinished revolutions in history, or the individuals leading them, like say, Lenin, Thomas Paine -- or why not Napoleon Bonaparte -- are comical. Only that columnist and his tribe, brought up with plenty of milk and whiskey in warm or cool houses, successfully procuring a beautiful university degree and tying up with a billionaire media baron are the models of noncomical successful people. They are never eccentric. They never become mad. Also they are never aristocratic. They have unconcealed hatred for the bloggers.

A few commentators’ way of seeing things is unique. Khudiram Bose was hanged by British government when he was in his teens. His crime was he threw a bomb at a British district administrative head that due to wrong information killed his wife who was at that time traveling in the coach designated to the district magistrate. After mutiny this was the first terrorist act involving a killing and execution. For a century Khudiram is remembered and worshipped by his countrymen, particularly the Bengalis. A commentator went into an overdrive by describing this act as teen-age craze for bravado and also an act of foolishness. Without inviting a debate over effectiveness of terrorism etc. thousands or hundreds of thousands offered their lives for the cause that they believed to be correct. One can question their perception. But it is cynical and heartless to ridicule them. All throughout the history millions are struggling and stumbling for a correct and effective way of removing oppression and exploitation. To get your fat salary you are writing essays to ridicule them. But why ridicule who have chosen otherwise?

With the deepening of economic depression another variety of economic or financial analytical writers have opened up their score. Their task is to affirm in the morning the global nature of the crisis affecting India and in the evening to assure all and sundry about the insularity of India to global crisis. When the question of prosperity through borrowings comes up perspective is global. When in a happening capitalist economy usual cyclical crisis starts, when wars no longer make the economy move, when artificial solvency induced by housing boom collapses in the USA, India cannot escape the consequences. These economists are learned and intelligent people. They are aware of everything. Still they have to write as they are asked to write. They are also a bunch of commodity sellers.

DISHING OUT IRRELEVANCE

2008-09-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

A spectre is haunting the media world of India – the spectre of communism. All the media moghuls of electronic, print, audio and visual variety have assembled to exorcise this spectre. These at least belong to the realm of fact. The rest is shadowboxing, but shadowboxing with a purpose.

Why this purpose has been invented when it is almost twenty years Soviet Union has collapsed after more than seventy years of existence, when the Peoples Republic of China has turned all its attention to a massive accumulation of capital and resource building quietly burying all the blistering rhetoric about revolutionism and reformism? China is on the threshold of becoming one of the mightiest powers of the world. Russia is now becoming rapidly a powerful modern state on bourgeois democratic line. Now, what is the hurry of the Indian anti-communists to finish off whatever that is still left of the Indian communists?

There is a hurry. India is also becoming quite an attractive capitalist country in a democratic garb notwithstanding the terrible load of poverty and squalor. And there are numerous denominations of communists thriving here upon fast increasing disparity in possessing wealth. To permit this to grow is to jeopardize India’s capitalist growth. To stamp out this danger state’s punitive power is being increased at an incredible pace. We are almost becoming a police state .On the other hand, media manipulations have become a mighty weapon .In fact, press, TV channels etc. those that really matter are an extension of very big business empires. To circulate the garbage of lies, unreality, porno, messages of innumerable godmen, obscurantism, cynicism etc., skilled hands are required – skilled editors, authors, scriptwriters, filmmakers, camera wizards and all that. They are hired at fabulous prices. Idealism, ethics etc. have become merely beautiful ancient words. Such an ambiance has to be seriously built.

Smart growth of capitalism demands a price, a cost input. Mere trickling down will not serve the purpose, as Joseph Stiglitz (see pic above and BIO below with a link to Wikipedia) has put it. If capitalism grows in a massive form its benefits to the citizens of society should also be massive. Other alternatives only would make this business of capitalism forbiddingly costlier. As Stiglitz has pointed out, the European or American Left rather has a more sustainable programme for this than the rightwing of these continents. Perhaps, more mature bourgeois content of these societies is responsible for this. Indian anticommunist columnists are mere reflections of this immature bourgeois content of Indian capitalism.

Now Stiglitz is a world famous Noble Prize-winning economist, not a card-holding member of any communist party. And Marx remains Marx and becomes more entrenched and relevant with the progress of capitalism. Marxian methodology of economic determinism is constantly gathering strength, for the simple reason that course of history is not affected by appearance or disappearance of Karl Marx. And Karl Marx was fully aware of it.

STIGLITZ BIO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiglitz)

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal (1979) and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has held the rank of University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is the most cited economist in the world, as of June 2008

A Glimpse of America

2008-08-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

America, what TV shows and trash literature would have us believe, is nothing like that in reality. Yes, there are crowded cities with notorious slums like Harlem, occasional muggings, crimes, a few stooping scroungers around, small crowds in church sponsored soup kitchens in their battered pickups. There is all this. There are prejudice and malice, although waning, of redneck variety.

Plainly, to a visitor on a brief sojourn America appears to be vast and beautiful. We, in India live and die in ever-increasing stifling crowd. Our psychology is shaped and moulded accordingly. Their fear and our fear are different. They are chasing opportunities. This chase is becoming ever faster and consequently anxiety load is mounting. Our fear is primeval and elemental. Either one eats or starves and starves to death. People there generally live under a very large social security umbrella. That someone will starve to death is quite absurd. To us this is quite commonplace. Our fear is nobody will hear us and we will perish. The very first feeling after alighting at Kennedy airport is an incredible sense of space, solidity, quiet efficiency and speed. We had our trepidations about new and stricter security regime. These are enforced and enforced rigorously but courteously also. After 9/11 we cannot expect anything milder.

This feeling of space is a remarkable thing. A country three and half times larger than India with only one fourth of India’s population make it so attractive. A brief visit of six weeks is hardly of any consequence to grasp these matters of size and quantity. America’s riches and plenty vis-à-vis our poverty and squalor evoke envy and anger in us. An average American is quite good human being like his counterpart in any other part of the world. This reminds one of several things. The famous book “Ugly American” by William Liiderer and Eugene Burdich. Reminds one of Lenin also, who in the pamphlet known as Colonial Thesis wrote in one place that hatred of people of dependant countries towards the colonising powers was so great that they do not distinguish. Even the elements of the working class are not spared. Common Americans are bearing the brunt. Imperialism is capitalism when it emerges as finance capital of monstrous proportion. There is no national benchmark. If there had been an Iraqi imperialism its characteristics would have been the same. Chinese communists are intent upon building a vast capital base in order to make China an advanced country. Let us watch where are the levers of self-limitation to curb the aggressiveness natural to full-grown finance capital.

Meanwhile, the gigantic unleashing of the productive forces there stuns travellers like us from an extremely poor country. Commodities of any kind, products of any kind there is no dearth of them. While fiddling with a laptop I composed a letter to one of my very near ones, a subcontinental Marxist and expressed myself. The reaction was instant and bitter. What was not there? Atrocities, cruelties, brutalities of American imperialism. Everything. Only thing avoided glossed over is unbelievable growth of productive forces in America. Not only in America. Everywhere, wherever American ascendancy has been established. Admission of obvious does not necessarily make it historically justified. It should also be admitted that in several experiments of achieving socialism, including one that was attempted in Russia, went nowhere near American productivity. Of course this is only one aspect and this can never render the ideas and concept of scientific socialism something to be trifled with. Top level U.S universities pour out every year an impressive number of individuals with awe inspiring intellectual qualities who are rapidly becoming disillusioned with American condition, both economic and political. That American war in Iraq is sought to be buttressed by undiluted lies is there for everyone to see. Larger and larger number of American people are increasingly becoming aware of this. And it in U.S.A and Great Britain largest of demonstrations are being held against the Iraqi war. At least war in Iraq has very little to do with war against terrorism.

Recently concluded elections in the U.S.A were just not a matter of who secured the highest number of popular votes. Considering the whole backdrop this election results have alarmed the whole bi-partisan leadership, whether he is a Bush or a Kerry. As cheaply painted among anti American crowd all over the world Americans are not buffoons. They are quite intelligent people. Bush and Kerry are also intelligent in their own way. These election results have made them realize how dangerous was the mood of the American people, whether one was a republican or a democrat. That was why this cry for bonhomie by Bush and Kerry as soon as the elections were over. The fear is so great that Bush has commented that great American universities have acquired a pronounced left leaning. In a reputed university from an occasional chat or a casual remark thrown out by students and teachers, I had an impression that Bush had been substantially nearer to truth. This is not to endorse the naïve idea that American masses will run to barricades musket in hand to bring down American capitalism. American public life is far too rich to accommodate such comical indulgences. But among them a distinct feeling is emerging that American way of fashioning the world is no longer tenable. There is perceptible yearning for a change. How this will evolve is a thing to be watched and studied.

Another thing is coming into American life. In fact, Maurice Dobb pointed out long ago in England. Opulence has become so overwhelming that physical capitalism, so to say, or, entrepreneurial capitalism has become less attractive. Large number of power weilding coupon clippers are emerging who among themselves have all of the finance capital that would have decisive impact over the events. Except for political convenience they are least bothered by national prejudices. Stock market is their paradise and superprofiteering is their pinnacle of success. Faming sector in the U.S.A, Canada or Australia is a vast corporate affair where small-time American farmers have little to do. As a matter of fact this section of mostly American whites are fast disintegrating and disappearing.

Fabulously large cornfields, vineyards stretching up to horizon the both sides of expressway 90 spreading up to Canadian border show up a few important things. Alongside fully mechanized operation there are infrequently situated sagging sad looking white painted wooden farm houses, silos, corn bins, representing mid last century farm production. This kind of production has been devoured by big capital connected to huge food product and wine and spirit producing corporates. In this perspective small has no role. This is an economic impossibility. American farmers of classical stories of Mark Twain days have virtually disappeared. A part of them, after retraining, have become farm labourers. Parts of them are floating across the country to become carpenters, masons. road gang labour etc. working under the contractors. Farm production, on the other hand, is achieving greater and greater heights. U.S.A, Canada and Australia together can feed the whole world many times over if they really want it. And, moreover, farm production in the U.S.A is handsomely subsidized.

Consideration of comparative cost ratio and concentration of capital expenditure, info technology, space technology, molecular biology, genetics, military hardware, capital goods and the wealth accumulated through these have made the U.S.A the most desirable destination of all kinds of consumer goods, ranging from Japanese cars. And Chinese electronic goods and toys, Indian Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani cotton garments, sweat shirts, footwear, hats, caps fruits vegetable, fish from Caribbean, China, The catalogue will require pages. And to cap it all outsourcing from poorer countries. American finance capital is in no way bothered about these. If popular sentiment could be soothed a little, if the administration can handle the unemployment situation a little skilfully it will go all out for outsourcing in every department. Only high-grade technology will be extremely carefully guarded. The American big bourgeois is a new personality. A new phenomenon. Its sentimental equations are different. Rhetorically making faces to America and rhetorically flattering lands of Tao, Confucius, Mahabharata and Ramayana will hardly help the mankind. Ordinary people like us discover a new realism when we find British girls and boys unhesitatingly carrying out the orders from a lady with heavy gold earrings and distinct Harianvy English in cleaning the aircraft at Heathrow. There is your globalisation and new realization.

2008-08-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

Coming soon, my thoughts!