Kolkata – a natural bulwark against divisive politics?

I was fortunate to meet James Bradbury, a PhD student from Manchester University, when he was doing field studies in and around Kolkata a few years ago. Within a few months, James became reasonably proficient in Bangla and made lots of friends here. Clearly, he was learning not just from printed letters; he was trying to understand the city through experiential learning.

Today, I happened to re-read one of his essays. On 14 September 2020, James wrote this about Kolkata: 

“Once the seat of power in colonial India, Kolkata has once again moved to the center of the nation’s political life. Now, it is integral to a struggle to define the Indian nation. What engenders this struggle in the first place is arguably Kolkata’s living repository of experiences, memories, and ideas—everything that the city preserves and that contradicts the BJP’s political agenda. This political tradition is kept alive in the chatter of the city’s coffee houses, tea shops, and campuses, and lodged in the collective memories of independence, displacement, resettlement, and renewal.

“And it is indeed fragile. As the BJP’s electoral juggernaut rolls eastward, it will inevitably alter Kolkata’s political culture: Hindu nationalism will play a greater role in coming years, stirring up underlying religious tensions and politicizing questions of citizenship and belonging along the border. But this vision of India will also face a natural bulwark in the refugee megacity, where some voters and activists will stubbornly adhere to their time-honed ideas and reject attempts to rule them by sowing divisions. Kolkata may, in this process, rekindle some of the rebellious energy that has characterized its history. In its midst, it continues to shelter ideas that were important to India’s nation-making past, and which are likely to re-emerge in one form or another to shape its future.”

The result of the recent election in West Bengal has flummoxed pundits of all persuations. Except for Prashant Kishore and – I can say now – James Bradbury, NOBODY could foresee the future in such clear terms. Kolkata has indeed rekindled “some of the rebellious energy that has characterized its history.”

As a social scientist, James Bradbury shows tremendous prescience to predict what has been happening in Bengal today. Take a bow, James!

I would strongly recommend that you invest a little time to read it. If you do, you shall get some clarity about the history of West Bengal and also a partial answer to the question why a state with such a large population of Hindu refugees uprooted by Muslims have always kept communal political parties like the Hindu Mahasabha, Jan Sangh, and now BJP, at arm’s length. Happy reading!

Here’s the link to the essay. 

21 May 2021

The Poet of Famine

 

The revolutionary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya, born on 15 August 1926, died before he was 21.

The Wikepedia contains a brief page on him. It summarises his life accurately though inadequately in the following words:

“As a poet as well as a Marxist he wielded his pen against the Second World War, the famine of 1943, fascist aggression, communal riots etc. His poems, which describe the sufferings of the common people and their struggle for existence, look forward to an exploitation-free society.”

In a poem in his collection of poems titled The Passport (ছাড়পত্র) Sukanta wrote,

“Yet, the inevitability of starvation

Spreads through me terrible blight.

I am a poet of famine – in my nightmares

I hear footsteps of death every night.”

(তবুও নিশ্চিত উপবাস

আমার মনের প্রান্তে নিয়ত ছড়ায় দীর্ঘশ্বাস –

আমি এক দুর্ভিক্ষের কবি,

প্রত্যহ দুঃস্বপ্ন দেখি, মৃত্যুর সুস্পষ্ট প্রতিচ্ছবি!)

The self-proclaimed “poet of famine” possibly died as a result of starvation, of tuberculosis, two months and two days before what would have been his 21st birthday (and the Independence Day of a new republic), at Jadavpur T. B. Hospital in Kolkata.

Sharing my translation of an iconic poem of Sukanta. Its last line has also become a catch-phrase in Bangla.

I do not know who the great prophet was, who Sukanta addressed in this poem. Could he be the greatest poet of Bengal who had spread a message of love and beauty through his life? Rabindranath Tagore had been 66 when Sukana was born. The Bengal Famine that killed three to four million people happened two years after Tagore’s passing. It is impossible that Sukanta was uninfluenced by Tagore. Rather, like every educated Bengali, his social sensibilities and intellectual development would have been deeply influenced by the seer.

To the Great Prophet

Great Prophet! The hour of poetry is over,

Let our book be prose from cover to cover.

End the rhythm of words and rhyme,

The hammer of the prose – the call of our time!

The softness of the verse I shall tell,

Poetry, I must bid you farewell;

In the land of the hungry and the dead

The full moon is a lump of burnt bread.

 

 

হে মহাজীবন

হে মহাজীবন, আর এ কাব্য নয়

এবার কঠিন, কঠোর গদ্য আনো,

পদ-লালিত্য-ঝঙ্কার মুছে যাক

গদ্যের কড়া হাতুড়িকে আজ হানো!

প্রয়োজন নেই, কবিতার স্নিগ্ধতা–

কবিতা তোমায় দিলাম আজকে ছুটি,

ক্ষুধার রাজ্যে পৃথিবী-গদ্যময়ঃ

পূর্ণিমা চাঁদ যেন ঝলসানো রুটি।

 

Translated on 2 March 2021

 

Picnic on the Top of a Volcano

The heading of this piece was the name of a Bangla book (আগ্নেয়গিরির শিখরে পিকনিক) written by the late economist Ashok Rudra long ago. It could have been written today. What else can better describe the fact that a majority of my educated upper-middleclass friends exchange thousands of inane jokes and are generally engrossed in trivia when 17% of our fellow citizens are targeted, mentally tortured, and some of them murdered in cold blood, with the active support of the state that is oath-bound to protect them? ... When what we get to watch / read as news is mostly government handouts … When people are sent to jail for expressing their opinion on Facebook (one of them is a personal friend, Souradeep Sengupta, a physics teacher in Silchar), while murderers roam free on the streets? … When courts have – barring admirable exceptions – abandoned their duty to protect the weak, and are bending over backwards to please the executive? … When historians and social scientists warn us that our country is at a cusp, and soon, the India as we know her might have become history?

Read “my educated upper-middleclass friends” above as “my educated upper-middleclass Hindu friends”. Lots of them have sold their souls to the ideology of hate and divisiveness; they somehow try to justify every wrong committed by the powerful. Some others are blissfully unconcerned about the mayhem around us, or at least, seem to be so. The second group reminds me of the decadent feudal families in Tolstoy novels or our own Bengali idle rich of the 19th century who indulged in, besides wine and women, ridiculous passions like flying pigeons and cock-fights while the poor lived a dog’s life.

However, on the other hand, there are lots of Hindus who believe that no one can be punished just for being born into a particular religious community. “Being born” cannot be a crime.

The two sides have been engaged in angry arguments, the consequences of which have been neatly summed up in the following message I received this morning [©Meha Dhondiyal, I have lightly edited the text for brevity.]

I know this will come as no consolation to my Muslim friends, but at least your families are together in sorrow n fear. OTOH, Hindu families have split straight down the middle on ideological grounds.

The generation brought up in Congress comfort are often rabid bigots thanks to WhatsApp-borne ignorance about Muslims, CAA, foreign affairs, and the state of the economy. The younger generation, creative people, intellectuals, and educated women are more likely to be liberal, informed and articulate, but their number is much smaller and they are likely to be outshouted.

Heated arguments on MoSha and Muslims are an everyday affair. Or else, political issues are not touched with a bargepole for fear of acrimony. Some can’t talk to parents or in-laws. Some are apologising for their rabid uncles. Friends and relatives have stopped inviting those who differ on ideological grounds. Or, liberals prefer not to visit any bhakt gathering.

I think it's better that we have ppl openly fighting their family for humanity and progressive values. In fact, there should be more such voices. But God knows, I've never seen such divisions in India everywhere: in polity, society, and family.

Ab ki baar is polarisation Sarkar!

Thank you, Aravind for sharing this incisive message. I too have been thinking on these lines. But in the following lines, I’d try to go a little beyond. On how we should handle the problem as individuals.

Fortunately, my family has much fewer bigots. Not too many fault lines there. But most of my childhood friends and former colleagues are, I believe, either bhakts, or “closet bhakts”. Some are even worse: they belong to the unconcerned people who I have tried to describe at some length above. For example, after the recent pogrom in Delhi, lots of my friends aren’t least perturbed by the planned, cold-blooded assault that lead to 53 deaths and that turned thousands of people paupers within three days. (I am not talking about the mental trauma that thousands will go through for the rest of their lives.)

I am tired of arguing with these “friends”. And honestly, disgusted. It would be easy not to carry such people as friends. But it will also mean drawing more lines on the ground, putting up more walls. Wouldn’t that be surrendering to the ideology of hatred?

I believe I have found the answer. Friendship happens at two levels. Some friendships define who you are. Discarding some friendships would amount to discarding some of your own self. Ditto, with some relationships.

No, I won’t let go such friends, even if they are fanatical lovers on Modi. My love for them is unconditional, it is etched in stone, no political dust storms can erase it. But, does everyone I studied or worked with, although technically a friend, qualify to be included in this group? The answer is a quiet No.

And with such people, from today, I won’t interact. I would simply tell them, and please forgive my language, “Fuck off!”

PS: There are people who haven’t been covered in this note, those who believe what’s happening around is wrong, but don’t speak up. The Desmond Tutu quotation is for their consideration.

Wednesday, 11 March 2020

কলকাতা ৪৬

বেশ একটু গর্বের সঙ্গে আপনাদের জানাতে পারি যে এই পুঁথিটির লেখিকা স্বয়ং বেশ কয়েকবার আমাদের হাজরা মোড়ের বাড়িতে এসেছেন।

সে সময় তাঁর বয়েস আট কি নয়। আমাদের বাড়িতে তাঁর চেয়ে দু-চার বছরের ছোট দুটি শিশু ছিল; তাদের নিয়ে তাঁর আহ্লাদের অন্ত ছিলনা। জীবন্ত পুতুল দুটি নিয়ে উর্বীর খেলা আর শেষ হতনা, যদিও শেষ বাসের সময় এগিয়ে এলে ওর মা উদ্বিগ্ন হয়ে পড়তেন, স্বাভাবিক ভাবেই। ওদের বাড়িটাও ছিল একটু খটমট যায়গায়, পার্ক সার্কাসে রেললাইনের ওপারে, সব ঋতুতে দুঃখী মানুষে ভরা চিত্তরঞ্জন হাসপাতালের হতাশার বৃত্ত ছাড়িয়ে। (একটু প্রসঙ্গান্তরে যাই, হাসপাতালের নাম “চিত্তরঞ্জন” কোন বুদ্ধিতে দেয় মানুষ?)

এই সময়, অনেকগুলো ডেডলাইন পার হবার পর, যখন মাকে আরে কিছুতেই দাবীয়ে রাখা যাচ্ছেনা, উর্বী তাঁর ব্রহ্মাস্ত্র প্রয়োগ করতেন, “আমি দুধ খাবো।”

এমন বাঙালি মা-মাসি অদ্যাপি জন্মান নি যাঁরা শেষ বাস ধরতে হবে এই তুচ্ছ কারণে দুগ্ধ পিয়াসী শিশুকন্যাকে বঞ্চিত করবেন। সুতরাং ঝটপট দুধ বেরত, ঈষদুষ্ণ গরম করা হত, এবং সেই এক গ্লাস দুধ উর্বী খেতেন বড় খেয়াল গাওয়ার স্টাইলে, বে-শ খানিকটা সময় নিয়ে।

ঘটনাচক্রে ওদের বাসস্থানের খবর আপনাদের দিয়ে দিয়েছি ওস্তাদ লেখকের মতো, কারণ পার্ক সার্কাস রেল লাইনের পিছনে, মূলত গরীব মুসলমান অধ্যুসিত যায়গা, যে এলাকার claim to fame হচ্ছে একটি মানসিক হাসপাতাল, তিনটি মুসলমান ও একটি হিন্দু কবরখানা, এবং রেললাইনের ওপারে সংশয়-উদ্রেককারী নামের আড্ডিবাগান বস্তি – এই নিয়ে, এবং আরও অনেক কিছু নিয়েই উর্বীর বই, এক নিঃশ্বাসে পড়তে হবে এরকম ২০৭টি অনন্যসুন্দর পৃষ্ঠা।

মূল শহরের সীমারেখার ঠিক বাইরে, ইম্প্রুভমেন্ট ট্রাস্ট, মেট্রপলিটান ডেভলাপমেন্ট অথারিটি ইত্যাদির সদাশয় দৃষ্টি এড়িয়ে, প্রায় আগাছার মতো বেড়ে ওঠা এই এলাকাটিতে আগাছার মতই ভেসে আসা নানা অনাবশ্যক flotsam and jetsam-এর মত মানুষজন, যাঁদের মধ্যে আছেন নেপালি খ্রিস্টান সিকিউরিটি ইন-চারজ ও তাঁর হিন্দু বাঙালি বউ, জনৈক হিন্দু মালায়ালি স্বামী আর তার ভিন রাজ্যের খ্রিস্টান বৌ, যাকে সে পরিচয় দেয় সেক্রেটারি হিসেবে, একজন গরীব পাদ্রি, বিগত দিনের দিকপাল ফুটবল খেলোয়াড় রশিদ, যে এখন বৃদ্ধ ও নির্ভেজাল মাতাল, রক্ষণশীল ব্যবসায়ী পরিবারের মেয়ে, যে অনেক লড়াই করে আর্টিস্ট হয়েই ছাড়ল, অথবা পিতৃহীন দুটি মেয়ে সাফল্য খুঁজে পেতে অন্ধকারের মধ্যে ঢুকে গেল, এরকম আরও অনেক ব্যতিক্রমী চরিত্র এবং অবশ্যই কয়েক হাজার দরিদ্র মুসলমান পরিবার। এদের নিয়েই পোস্ট কোড কলকাতা ৪৬। এদের নিয়েই উরবীর ভারতবর্ষের ছবি। এবং কত যে অসাধারণ গল্প লুকিয়ে ছিল এদের সাধারণ জীবনযাপনে। (আধুনিক বাংলায় নাকি শুধু "যাপনে" লিখলেই চলত?)

উর্বীর বাবা-জ্যাঠারা নেহাতই লিবরাল হিউমানিস্ট ছিলেন, তাই এই পরিবেশে সেই শিশু বয়েস থেকেই মেয়েটির মেলামেশা ছিল সব রকমের মানুষজনের সঙ্গে, গরীব, দুঃখী, বিচিত্র ভারতবর্ষের একটা microcosm-এর সঙ্গে। শিশু এবং কিশরীর চোখ দিয়ে দেখা এই ছবিটা আমি কোন দিন ভুলতে পারব মনে হয়না।

অতঃপর কিশরীটি বড় হয়, আন্তর্জাতিক খ্যাতিসম্পন্ন বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে পি এইচ ডি করে এসে সে এখন অধ্যাপক। পরিচিত পৃথিবীকে খুঁজে না পাবার বেদনা নিয়ে স্মৃতিচারণ শেষ হয়। শেষ হয় আমাদের সমষ্টি থেকে ব্যক্তিতে যাত্রায়, কেমন করে অনিদ্রা থেকে দুঃস্বপ্নে আমাদের যাত্রায় কাক ডাকে, তাই দিয়ে।

শেষে একটা কথা বলি। মনে হয় কলকাতা ৪৬ নামটার মধ্যে একটা ইঙ্গিত দিয়ে রেখেছেন লেখিকা, ইতিহাস চর্চা দিয়ে যাঁর রুজিরুটি। ৪৬-এর দাঙ্গা ও বিভাজন না হলে কলকাতা পুরোপুরি অন্যরকম একটা শহর হত, আর কলকাতা ৪৬-ও লেখা হতনা।

আজ আমরা একই রকমের একটা বিভাজনের সামনে দাঁড়িয়ে। উর্বীর বইটি সেই কারণেও আপনার পড়া প্রয়োজন।

*

পুনশ্চঃ গোবরার কবরখানা ইত্যাদি ৮০/৯০ বছর আগেও ছিল, এবং সেখানে কোন ইংরাজি-নবীশ টেনিস ও শিকারপ্রিয় anglophile হিন্দু বাঙালির বিশাল বাড়ি হাঁকানোর কথা নয়। এমনকি, সম্পন্ন মুসলমান বাঙ্গালিরও নয়। লেখিকার পিতামহ কেন এই কর্মটি করেছিলেন তা ভাঙবো না। কারণ তা হলে লেখিকার পরিবারের ব্যতিক্রমী মানুষদের প্রথাভাঙ্গা জীবনের অনেক গল্প বলতে হয়। অতটা টাইপ করার আগে আমার ডাক এসে যাবে!

২৩/০৮/২০১৯

126 Years Ago

[Polytheistic (many-Gods) religions are generally more tolerant than monotheistic (one-God) religions. And Hinduism certainly is one of the more accepting faiths. Today, when this ancient religion is being hijacked by a group of bigoted men whose hearts are brimming with intolerance and hate, let us look back at what a young, just thirty-year-old completely unknown Indian monk said in Chicago in 1893. Please read on. It is a surprisingly brief speech.]

Sisters and brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to the southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:

‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, 0 Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.’

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:

'Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.'

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time has come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

Source: GREAT SPEECHES OF MODERN INDIA, edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Random House India, 2007)

(14/08/2019)

Big Brother is Watching Your Underwear

Yesterday, my wife went to Big Bazaar, which as you know, is a chain of department stores catering to middleclass Indians. This particular outlet in Hosur is fairly large, spread over four floors; it has separate sections for men’s clothing, women’s attires, household goods, and so on. My wife visited several sections of the store around one in the afternoon. (Please note. The time is relevant to my story.) Just before checking out, she stopped in front of a rack and picked up two vests for me. However, on second thoughts, she decided not to buy them and naturally, forgot all about them by the time she reached home.

Fortunately, these days it is not easy to forget something if someone wants to sell it to you. Around 6 PM, when my other half checked her smartphone, she found a series of adverts by Amazon for men’s vests. Could it be because she had earlier searched for men’s vests on the Net? No. She vows never to have done so.

I am sure Amazon offered those ads with the altruistic motive to make me wear freshly minted undergarments, but was it mere coincidence? Have you experienced anything similar?

People who know how the world is run today tell me this was not a coincidence.

If I have understood them correctly, the targeted ads came because my spending half’s phone was on, and her location was accessible to Google and Amazon, which app she has on her phone. One or both of them knew – and this is scary – the exact steps she had traced, including her tryst with a rack of men’s vests. Either Google sold this information to Amazon or Amazon themselves tracked her.

Then it gets even creepier. Somewhere, at some place on earth, someone is running an AI (artificial intelligence) programme. This information was possibly matched with two more pieces: (A) my wife has a husband, (B) the said husband has never bought underwear from Amazon and so, he must be desperately in need of a few pieces.

And voila! Amazon decides to offer her a set of three vests at a discount. All this within five short hours.

[Statutory Disclaimer: I find it difficult to believe that commercial surveillance has intruded our private life to this extent already. But frankly, I cannot think of a better explanation. If you can, please tell me.]

*

Last year, on the Diwali night, our home near Hosur was burgled when we were not there. The thieves – there were clearly more than one person – broke open a window, got in, and spent at least an hour ransacking the house, looking for valuables. They threw every book on to the floor, removed everything from the cupboards, upturned every mattress, and even emptied dustbins hoping we would be smart enough to hide some jewellery therein. I guess they did all that with the help of the torch(es) on their mobile phone(s).

Later, my son told me, very likely, the burglars used Android phones, possibly several of them, when they converged on our house.

If they did, Google knows who they were, their age, address, their fathers' names, and possibly their zodiac signs too.

Google knows!

*

A significant novel of the twentieth century, George Orwell’s 1984 predicted a dystopian future for humankind where the world would be shared by three monstrously huge super-states and one of which would have a society split into three clear categories: inner party, ordinary party workers, and the rest called proles, who were nonentities. You possibly know the story, but please let me give the background in a few words.

The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith is an ordinary party worker whose every move is monitored by the state. There is a two-way telescreen in every living room which could never be turned off. So, the state can check what Winston and others are doing 24 X 7. He has no private moment, no private thoughts. Writing a diary is an offence punishable by imprisonment and unimaginable torture. There are huge cut-outs on roads showing just one face; you also see the same chilling visage everywhere else, in offices, in your apartment’s landings, and so on. The country is under the constant gaze of one man referred to as the Big Brother, who may not even be alive. But people live with an inexorable fear: “Big Brother is watching!”

Orwell could not have imagined there would be a time when everyone – from an ordinary woman to a professional burglar – will be under the constant, unblinking scrutiny of a Commercial Big Brother.

My blood freezes!

Friday, 02 August 2019

PS *** 

After reading this story, a young friend who is an expert in the field has to say this. (I am not giving his name in deference to his wishes.)

"All your conjectures might be true. You should be aware that India has poor data protection laws, practically no conflict of interest laws, and legislatures still don't understand things like identity theft, profiling, etc. So Google and Amazon cannot do most of the stuff in US, UK and Germany, which they can do in India. Moreover anything related to tech companies has God [like] status in India. Tech companies cannot be touched or questioned."


It is a new perspective for me and I must share this with you, Dear Reader. ***

Becoming irrelevant?

“A friend once told me that what she fears most about growing old is becoming irrelevant, turning into a nostalgic old woman who cannot understand the world around her, or contribute much to it”, writes Yuval Noah Harari in Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow (p57). Harari says this in the context of the massive changes that are expected in the twenty-first century and beyond. He believes a mix of technological progress and human ambition will lead to a situation when humans will turn into gods, like the ones in Hindu and Greek mythology. After this evolutionary break-through, new humans will have enormous powers in their long, death-defying lives.

When that happens, the human mind will work in ways that we can scarcely imagine. And if any one of us lived up to that time, she would invariably face the day of reckoning feared by Harari’s friend. She won’t “understand” the new world.

In a different context and for a completely different set of reasons, isn’t an incomprehensible time already upon us? As I grow old, I cannot understand my country. I feel I'm becoming irrelevant. And yes, I am nostalgic about the highly imperfect world I lived in in my childhood and youth. To explain why I say so, let us check a few facts that were unthinkable 10 years ago, but which are “normal” now.

1. Innocent Muslims can be lynched time and again on some pretext or other, with practically no action from governments to rein in the killers? Policemen wouldn’t take lynch victims to hospital to ensure their death if necessary? Such attacks would become a template to terrorise Muslims?
2. Hatred against Muslims and Christians will be openly peddled to bring out the atavistic, caveman fear that lies dormant possibly in every human being towards the “other”? In due course, the fear will spread and the population will be divided along communal lines?
3. Over time, this fear would take the shape of a solid, rock-like support for the ruling party, to the exclusion of the minorities and the people who don’t believe in the ruling party’s ideology?
4. In a strange exercise called preparing a National Register of Citizens (NRC), lakhs of people could be branded as foreigners, sent to detention camps located in overcrowded jails, and asked to prove their citizenship? (This is contrary to the protection that even the worst criminal enjoys. The police have to prove a murderer’s guilt. But if the administration chooses to call you a foreigner, YOU HAVE TO PROVE THAT YOU ARE NOT. Activist Harsh Mander says, “I have seen hundreds of cases in which a small difference in the English spelling of a Bengali name, or a small variation in age is enough for the NRC authorities and foreigners’ tribunals to sound the death-knell of “foreignness”.”)
5. An election could be fought and won with complete disregard to the real problems, like the state of the economy, unemployment, farmers’ distress, etc.?
6. When Muslim members of a new parliament take oath, or when opposition parliamentarians speak, they are heckled by chants of “Jai Sri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman”?

What is infinitely worse, a large number of normal, decent Indians not only feel all these are fine, they believe these are in some way necessary to protect the interests of the Hindu majority.

If you argue with them, in all probability they will throw at you – not their own arguments, but – long texts prepared by the ruling party’s “Ministry of Truth”, texts that put facts on their head. As you would know, the Hindutwa Brigade is desperate to “prove” that Aryans were the original inhabitants of India, something that has no historical or linguistic evidence.

Another example: A message has been doing the rounds that entire West Bengal, including Kolkata, would have gone to East Pakistan during Partition, and Congress had agreed to the formula. The catastrophe was prevented by Dr. SP Mukherjee singlehandedly. The fact is that there was indeed a proposal to create an independent state of Bengal, which was supported by a few Congress leaders from Bengal. But the national Congress leadership including Nehru and Patel opposed the move and preferred partition of Bengal. Mukherjee was irrelevant in West Bengal during his lifetime.

Falsehood has been cornering truth. A noxious cloud is hanging in our sky. I do not understand the world around me, I know that I am becoming irrelevant, but I refuse to give in. The challenge is to remain sane and to restore sanity at a national level. The task is enormous. Every little speck of contribution should count.

Thursday, 27 June 2019

A history of 1.3 seconds

The earth is 4.5 billion (4,500,000,000) years old and life evolved on our planet about 3.5 billion years ago. Naturally. Without a benign god sweating blood to “create” anything, scientists agree on this a with rare absence of squabbling.

Humans or Homo sapiens came much later. The first humans lived in Africa 70,000 years ago. In other words, if you consider 3.5 billion years as the first day or the first 24 hours of life on our planet, humans arrived just 1.3 seconds ago. (Trust me, I haven’t botched up my arithmetic this time!) Yet, the 1.3 seconds has overwritten the history of the previous 24 hours.

Seventy thousand years ago, human beings began walking from deep within Africa in search of “greener pastures”.

Ultimately, they spread to every corner of the globe, from Europe to Alaska to Papua New Guinea. Every human, from the naked South American tribal to the semi-naked Bollywood actor, from the starving child in Eritrea to Bill Gates, from the illegal immigrant held captive in Manus island off Australia to the queen of England, every human can trace their ancestry to a common mother some 70,000 ago. Broadly speaking, this audacious hypothesis is now undisputed science.

SAPIENS, a book by one of the finest thinkers of our time, Yuval Noah Harari, is a history of this journey. Never before have I read a book that offers such an array of eye-popping facts and insights into what we are. Please read it. After reading it, I believe I have a little more complete and deeper perspective about myself and the world. For me, reading Sapiens has been a transition from illiteracy to getting some idea about the alphabet of the language of our civilization.

I don’t suffer from the delusion that I can write a cogent review of this life-changing book. But I’d love to introduce it to you. And what could be a better way of doing that other than sharing a few passages from the volume with you?

Harari begins with this statement:

“SEVENTY thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands at the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.” ... 

Harari goes on to say: “The wandering band of story-telling sapiens was the most destructive force the animal kingdom has ever produced.” … “The historical records make Homo sapiens look like ecological serial killers.”

"Shortly" after the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution changed the way human beings lived. Harari writes: “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse circumstances.”

Did we know this? “In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf.”

On capitalism: “When growth becomes a supreme god, unrestricted by any other ethical consideration, it can easily lead to catastrophe. Some religion, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.”

Regarding our relentless pursuit of comfort, which is has been a corollary of capitalism, Harari points out: “The pursuit of easier life resulted in much hardship … One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”

Luxuries have become part of our culture. But what is culture? Harari says, from the moment of our birth, we are made “to think in certain ways, to behave in accordance with certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules.” This created “artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called culture.”

How important are we on a cosmic scale of things? You might find the answer disturbing.

“As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of a blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose … If planet earth was to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe will probably be going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity will not be missed.”

Does it make us feel too insignificant? Hopefully, yes. And more helpfully, this book will help us put our conflicts and quarrels in perspective, and show them as what they are, insignificant nothings.

31 May 2019

[Book cover courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Asima Chatterjee and ...

It is wonderful to wake up and see Google celebrate the centenary of Dr. Asima Chatterjee, a scientist who is either unknown to or forgotten by her compatriots.

Asima Chatterjee is fortunate to have been just forgotten.

Subhash Mukhhopadhyay, a physician and a fellow Bengali scientist who independently created the second "test-tube baby" in the world almost single-handed in his primitive lab, was the target of intense envy of his fellow scientists and the all-knowing bureaucrats warming the chairs in the government secretariat in Kolkata.

Under the watchful eyes of a communist government lead by another "great" Bengali, a Commission was formed to verify the claims of Dr. Mukhopadhyay. The Commission, which included an atomic physicist among other luminaries, rubbished Mukhopadhyay's claims. Mukhopadhyay was humiliated as a fraud and transferred to a TB hospital. (I think, but will have to verify, the atomic physicist was the head of the panel.)

While we are proud that the world today recognises Asima Chatterjee's basic research in chemistry which has contributed to development of chemotherapy for treatment of cancer, let us also remember another Indian scientist of her generation who couldn't take it any more and committed suicide in 1981.

Durga, the baby who got her life thanks to Dr Mukhopadhyay, and Louise Brown of England, the first test-tube baby in the world, were both born in 1978, Durga 67 days later.

Twenty-nine years after Mukhopadhyay's death, in 2010, Robert G. Edwards, an English scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for developing the technique of in vitro fertilization.

23 September 2017

Stand calm and resolute

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Pietermaritzburg

These verses are from the The Mask of Anarchy by the English romantic poet Shelley. Gandhi once recited them to a Christian gathering in India.

As I woke up this morning in a country where hatred has become the dominating force in just a few years, I thought of the great man, and the lines which sum up his political creed.

Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,

Let them ride among you there;

Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;

What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise,

Look upon them as they slay,

Till their rage has died away.

Then they will return with shame,

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!

It seems for us, Indians, the old chains of colonialism have been replaced by new shackles of meanness and mutual hatred. India always had many fault-lines like religious, social, and economic, which Gandhi managed to join, not seamlessly, but effectively nonetheless. And I believe our success, rather, our survival as a federal country largely depends on how well we manage these fault-lines on a continuing basis.

Astonishingly, at present, some Indians are working overtime to widen these fissures like never before in recent history. In fact, they are dividing the country far more effectively than our ruthless alien rulers could, except for the last two years of their miserable rule.

One hundred and forty-eight years after Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born, I think recalling these lines once again would be a fine way to pay tribute to the flawed genius, who perhaps was more a human with multiple failings (like you and me) than a Mahatma.

Bengaluru

2 October 2017

[Photo courtesy news24.com: Statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Pietermaritzburg. It is at this place in South Africa where Gandhi, while travelling to Pretoria, was thrown off a train at the instance of a white-man who objected to his travelling in a first class compartment, though he had a valid first class ticket. Did the makers of the statue "return in shame"?]

NIGHT: “A slim volume of terrifying power”

When the slim volume arrived by courier, I’d been reading other books. I looked at the new arrival, read the blurbs, and smelled it for its deeply sensual pleasure. Then I decided to read a few pages before returning to Barbara Tuchman’s history of the Vietnam War.

I could put down Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT only after reading it completely, every word of it. 

If the lines above gave you the impression it was pleasure reading the 135 pages, you would be grossly mistaken. It was one of the most difficult and disturbing books I’ve ever read. It tells us about the monster that lives within each one of us. It is mind-numbing, and I wouldn’t even try to review it. I am just presenting the basic “storyline”. It will help you understand human nature better.

Eliezer Wiesel’s Jewish family lived happily in the small town of Sighet, Romania. Buffered by Austria and Hungary from Germany, they believed they were safe. Moreover, in the spring of 1944, “there was splendid news from the Russian front. There could no longer be any doubt: Germany would be defeated.” A deeply observant 13-year-old Elie watched elders going about their life, concerned about everything else except “their own fate”.

Their fate was foretold when Budapest radio suddenly announced that the Fascist Party had seized power in Hungary. In less than a week, the German army was in their street. And shortly, the entire Jewish population of the town was moved into and confined in two ghettos. Even then, they believed they would just live there in peace until the Red Army came to free them. “The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.”

Soon all of them would be packed in closed cattle cars so tightly that they wouldn’t even be able to sit down. They would be transported to Auschwitz death camps, where 90% of the deportees would be murdered on arrival, after being shorn of whatever valuables they had on them, including gold teeth. Most would die in gas chambers. Children would be thrown into a fire-pit.

The healthiest 10% would live on to deliver hard labour on near starvation diet … and die slow, miserable deaths.

As Eliezer’s family entered the camp facing SS men and their guns and clubs, someone commanded: “Men to the left! Women to the right!”

Just eight words “spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion” decimated a family. And many other families. That was the last time Elie and his father saw his mother and little sister, who – unknown to them – would be killed soon. He would meet his two older sisters after many years at a camp for war orphans.

The real story begins. The Nazis, with their famous eye for details, would have calculated the bare minimum nutrition needed for a person to survive. The prisoners got not a calorie more. Food consisted of watery soup, and bread, that too on good days. They went without any food many a day.

Hygiene was limited to a jar of disinfectants kept at the entrance of every block, with which the men had to soak themselves before having a luxurious shower followed by sleep on tightly packed hard wooden bunks without sheets. They would begin a day of hard labour early next morning.

They would be driven like than animals, but without the faintest trace of compassion that humans have for cattle, besides incessant abuses, threats, blows, lashes, and execution by public hanging for the slightest perceived lapse. (The extra effort was clearly unnecessary as people were shot at the drop of a hat, but I think the SS needed the spectacle to drive in the wedge of terror deeper into the heart of the prisoner.) Nazis had discovered a simple management principle, if you fell at work, you’d be marked for slaughter.

So the men toiled under the shadow of a chimney bellowing smoke a part of which had been living human beings a few hours ago. The men struggled to the limits of endurance literally under the shadow of death. Period.

If you thought things couldn’t be worse. You would be wrong, again. As the front came closer, Nazis decided to relocate the prisoners to another camp, this time, deep within Germany, in Buchenwald.

To the utter misfortune of the prisoners, the winter had set in. All they had for warm clothing were shirts and trousers removed from their dead comrades. Wiesel writes: “We each had put on several garments, one over the other, to better protect ourselves from the cold. Poor clowns, wider than tall, more dead than alive, poor creatures whose deathly faces peeked out from layers of prisoner’s clothes.”

An icy wind was blowing violently that morning. The prisoners were made to run on snow, pushed by gun wielding guards shouting, “Faster, you filthy dogs!” They ran through the day, they ran through the night. Their guards changed shifts when tired, but the prisoners ran on. Anyone falling behind was shot. But it was more for pleasure, because anyone lying on snow under a pitiless winter night sky didn’t have a ghost of a chance to survive in any case.

It is not clear how long the journey went until they are transferred to another cattle-car, this time, without a roof! And as the train trudges on through pouring snow and stops for eternity, the prisoners have nothing to eat or drink, except when curious German onlookers throw a few loaves of bread to the pitiable creatures on board. And as many men fight for the crumbs, people die. Eliezer – he is just 15 – watches a son snatching away bread from his dying father. They old man desperately clings on to his bread and pleads, “Son, you are killing me for a loaf of bread?”

By the time son achieves his goal, father is dead. The living desperately munches the food that might have saved the dead.

On the way, corpses are thrown out casually by men who themselves could have been cast away, dead. A hundred men boarded a wagon with Elie; only 12 get off at Buchenwald, where they would wait for death or liberation.

Some tragedy can only be described only in words, and not by pictures or films. Printed words can expand our horizon in a unique way and help us see the unseen, without which our world view would be much poorer.

Please read this book if you can. And think how well we have been able to deal with the monster that lives within every one of us.

06 September 2017

[Photo of Buchenwald Camp taken five days after its liberation by the Red Army; Elie Wiesel is on the second row from bottom, seventh from left, next to the plank. Courtesy the Wikipedia]

‘He would never forgive himself if anything happened to her’

On 14 August 2017, New York Times published a few anecdotes by the survivors of the HIndu-Muslim riots 70 years ago, which killed more than two million people, according to the Wikipedia.

The estimate tracked people who left their homes in India and Pakistan, but never reached the other side, and was based on the census figures before and after the Partition. The actual figure would have been much higher. And the tragedies of raped women, broken families, orphaned children would be far beyond the scope of statistics.

I am sharing one of the anecdotes from the NYT written by Sohail Murad. Please read the story, it reinforces our faith in humanity.

"When partition was announced, my father, who worked for the British Indian Government, was posted in Bombay. He was advised that as a Muslim he would have better career opportunities in Pakistan. He was asked to report to offices in Rawalpindi as soon as possible. He left and my mother, Rosy, who was 20, and their six-month-old daughter stayed behind until he could arrange for their accommodation. Because of the chaos he could not come back to get them, so he asked my mother to take a train to Lahore. On the train a Sikh gentleman noticed my mother alone with an infant and asked her where she was going. When she told him Lahore, he was shocked and told her about the massacres that were taking place on trains going to Pakistan — my mother and father hadn’t known.

"He said he was traveling to Amritsar (30 miles from Lahore) but would accompany her to Wagah, a border town between India and Pakistan, because he would never forgive himself if anything happened to her. He told my mother that if anyone asked, she was his daughter. He thought her name, Rosy, was fine since it was secular. But my sister’s name, Shahina, was distinctly Muslim, so if anyone asked her name was Nina. He stayed with them until Wagah and walked with them to the Pakistani border, kissed them both on their foreheads and told them he wished he could take them all the way to Lahore, but he would not make it back alive.

"My sister, who lives in Karachi, is still called Nina by everyone in the family. My mother insisted on that."

Bengaluru 

16 August 2017

They’ve done it again!

A government is supposed to solve problems, but the present one in Delhi creates problems when there’s none. Regularly!

After NOTE-BANDI, it’s CATTLE-TRADE-BANDI!

In one fell swoop two days ago, the Government of India has destroyed the livelihood of millions of ordinary Indians by virtually banning camel- and cattle-trade.

How many Indians work in tanneries and related fields? How many Indian lives depend on the legal business in buffalo and camel meat? Experts will certainly calculate the figures, but very roughly, even if half a percent of our population depends on these until-yesterday legal activities, the number would be a staggering 65 lakhs or 6.5 million.

Most of these people are poor, they know no other trade. The government doesn’t even seem to bother to offer them an alternative occupation, which in any case, it can't. So, the ban consigns these mostly-poor people to slow starvation deaths. Also, from the sociological point of view a vast majority of them are Muslims and Dalits, two most vulnerable sections of our society. (Dwivedis, Dasguptas, or Nambudris don't skin dead animals, do they?) And all this in the name of cows, one of the least sentient creatures around us.

Cartoon is by Keshav in the Hindu

If you permit me a short digression, three to four million Bengalis were killed in the Great Bengal Famine of the 1940s – engineered directly by the poster boy of the British right wing, Winston Churchill. Unlike Hitler, who killed six million Jews, Churchill didn’t need bullets and gas to kill millions. And the lesson from this gory chapter of history is: you can murder millions without using machine guns. I have reasons to believe something similar is going to happen in India unless this insane order is reversed.

Is it a bloody joke to play with the lives of such a huge multitude of already-struggling citizens, without a public debate, without taking the parliament into confidence, by a mere executive order? As if it was something like banning plastic packets?

Have Indians seen a more destructive ruler in the Indian capital since Robert Clive who stole shiploads of gold and silver from Bengal and turned the most prosperous place on earth into barren fields of dying people in just a few years?

If you are an Indian, whether you call your country Bharat Mata or not, please stand up and protest. We must get this ban reversed.

Sunday, 28 May 2017

Sir Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton's statue at Prague rail station 

While doing research for a book I am writing, I came across the extraordinary story of Nicholas George Winton, an ordinary man who proved himself to be a true hero at an extremely dangerous time in history. I cannot but share it here. The Photograph is from Wikipedia and the information is from Wikipedia and a few other sources.

In 1939, just days before the Second World War began, Nicholas Winton risked his life to save 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport (German for "child transportation"). He ensured their safe passage to Britain.  They would have been dead otherwise. And some of the children saved by Winton grew up to become mathematician, paediatric geneticist, film maker, parliamentarian, and so on. 

If Winton’s feat was incredible, what followed was even more so.

Like a true hero, he never publicised his efforts. Neither did he try to profit from it. Fifty years later, his wife found a scrapbook in their attic that contained the names, pictures, and documents of the children he had saved. 

And the world came to know his humongous exploits much later, through an episode of the BBC television programme That’s Life! in 1988. BBC invited Winton to the programme as a member of the audience. During the programme, the host of the programme, Esther Rantzen showed Winton's scrapbook and narrated his achievements. Then she asked if anybody in the audience owed their live to Winton, and if so, to stand up. More than two dozen people sitting around Winton and his wife rose and applauded.

Sir Nicholas was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 and received the highest Czech honour, the Order of the White Lion in 2014. He died on 1 July 2015, aged 106. 

Nicholas Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London. His parents were German Jews who had relocated to London two years before. The family name was Wertheim, but they changed it to Winton in an effort at integration. They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptised. 

In 1923, Winton entered school, but left without qualifications. He attended night school while volunteering at the Midland Bank. He then moved to Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris, working for different banks. He also earned a banking qualification in France. Returning to London, he became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. 

Shortly before Christmas 1938, Winton was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday. But he decided instead to visit Prague and help the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, then in the process of being occupied by Germany. 

Winton single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis. He set up his office at a dining room table in his Prague hotel. 

In the night of 9-10 November 1938, paramilitary forces and German civilians killed Jews throughout Nazi Germany, while the German authorities looked on. The pogrom was known as the Night of Broken Glass. The name comes from shards of broken glass that littered the streets of German cities after windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.

After the Night of the broken glass, the British Parliament allowed the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for their eventual return to their own country. 

However, the Dutch government refused Jewish refugees to enter the Netherlands, and the children were to board a ferry from there. The Dutch border guards sent the refugees back to Germany, despite the horrors being well known. 

Winton was able to overcome the impediment thanks to guarantees he had obtained from Britain. After the first train, the process of crossing the Netherlands went smoothly. Winton ultimately found homes in Britain for 669 children, many of whose parents would later perish in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Throughout the summer of 1939, he, with the help of his mother, placed photographs of the children in Picture Post seeking families to adopt them. He also wrote to US politicians such as Roosevelt, asking them to take in more children. 

Winton later said that two thousand more might have been saved if they had helped, but only Sweden accepted some refugee children, besides Britain. 

The last group of 250, scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, was unable to depart as Hitler invaded Poland on the same day, and the Second World War had begun. Of the children due to leave by that train, only two survived the war.

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Sadly, 2017 looks disturbingly like 1938. As I write this, millions of refugees are living in terrible camps unprotected from cold, rain, and snow. And borders are being sealed. People who could have had the same fate as the Syrian refugees if history had moved in a different direction, are trying their best to throw out starving children from their doors. 

The world needs lots of Nichlas George Wintons today.

Bengaluru / 05 Feb 2017