.•.Vol. 5: No. 35 DECEMBER 9, 1972

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View from DelhiRE-E TER U CLE -SAM

FROM A POLITICAL CORRES-

PO £NT 4

\SSAM : BEHIND THETROUBLE

.AFTAB 5

NEl:.L-DARPAN: A LIBERAL'SVIEW OF A PEAS TREVOLT-II

RA •• JIT GUHA 7

Rook ReviewTH~ WA TE LA TD

ASOK Mrn,\ II

TWO PL-\YHITEN GHOSE I~

MUSIC OF THE MAS ESBy A MUSIC CRITIC 14

. A STATEMENT 15

LETTERS 16

Editor: Samar SenPaINTED AT MODERN INDIA PRESS,7. RAJA SUBODH MULUClt SQUAllll,CALCUTTA-13 AND PUBLISHED WEEKLY

FOR GEJl)(INAL PtlllUCATlONS (P) LTD.BY SAlLUl SEN FROX 61, MOTT LANE,

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SATU~DAY AFTERNOONo N ,Saturday afternoon tbe West Bengal Cabinet descended OD.;

Chowringbee, the Chief Minister clambered on to the top of a-police van, waited for balf-an-hour for a hand-mike and then add,resseda large crowd of Congress students. Mr Subrata Mukherjee, the great guy ofthe Cbbatra Parislhad and Minister in the Department of Home, swore stemaction against the police and went on to blame Mr Jyoti Basu, tbe formerHome Minister in tbe second United Front Government, for installing hismen in the police force-men who were now trying to create a splitbetween the government and the public. (Couldn't it be that someCongress faction opposed to Mr Mookherjee is up to some trick~)

The policeman involved has been suspended, but the Cbhatra Parishadcalled a strike in chools and colleges-the second in six days-on Monday.

Tbe occasion for all this was: As the Chhatra Parishad was going onome sort of a deputation to Raj Bhaban, some of tlhem discovered aCPM man-or an anti-social-suspected of being involved in murdercases (according to one report, the police later said there were nocharges against him) in tbe rear, pounced on him and, according to oneversion, did not allow a police van to pick him up, \\fuile according toanother, a traffic policeman was asked to arrest him. When he refusedto do so oecause it was not his business he was surrounded by a crowd'.Going into a huff or being scared, he began to shoot-haven't we mar-vellous lpeople to keep law and order? Five people were injured,one of them seriously. This naturally led to a great commotion, neces-sitating the presence of the Cabin.e. Did Mr Ray, atop the police van,think of Lenin and Finland ration?

The fact that some people were wounded, and that one of!!bernmight die, is, of course, tragic. But the concern of tbe Cabinet has~n element of melodrama if one remembers tlhat members of the Ministry,as Congressmen, and the forces they control in the administration andouts i-d e have many killings to their credit. Their concern is alwayselective. They rush to places when their men are involved while taley

are noted for their brutal action or indifference when others are concerned.A government that arrests 175 people assembling for a public meeting,whose forces maim and kill prisoners, whose 'political' wing holds entireareas in terror, not allowing political opponents to return to their homes,.

On The Same Theme

can live by lies and melodrama. Andever since the /Ministry came topower after a strange election we!have been fed on lies and melodrama.But since Bengal.was once famousfor 'Jatra', her people still seem tohave an infinite capacity to 'De takenin by melodrama, particularly the

- puja-addict middle and lowermiddle classes. One !Such melo-drama is the sight of ministers collec-ling 'people's donations' for the com-ing Congress session in the SaIt Lake.It is rubbing salt in festering-wound _The Government and industrialists

A correspondent writes I:. Thank God, it was a man fromhe CPM and not CIA who triedingle-handed and unarmed to sabo-

.tage the large procession of Congress-students in Calcutta on Saturday last.Were it an agend from the CIA, which:a Kuwait dairy quoting reliable In-dian sources tells us, attempted fourtimes to kill Mrs Gandhi in two years,i,t would have been more difficult forMr S. S. Ray to assuage the wrath ofthe processionists. In that case hewould have been hard put to lay rheblame on the CIA straightaway-without compromising Indo-Americanrelations and jeopardising American.assistance'1 The Ardericans, Ie( usTecall, returned last week to India a.cheque of 29 miHion dollars by way-of debt relief, even without inform-ing ei,ther the India Government.or the Aid·India Consortium. Itlwas a siient gesture from the silent:majori'ty in the U.S., after the coro-'nation of Mr Nixon.

Mr Ray had however to tackle thelone CPM crusader among the crowd;in Esplanade Eastl. He must have'sensed thalt the CPM dies hard. It wasnot enough to drive the CPM menout from poll booths, from theirhomes and localities, chase them outof trade unions and college unions.It seems that the CPM has not hadit enough, some more hell has to beerved.

2

FRO TIER

hould bear all the expenses. Theclause oarring company con~ibutionsto political parties is overcome by thepractice of taking Rs 10,000 or moreoy way of advertising by companiesin Congress ouvenirs. The Ruleand Instructions for the Protectionof the Prime Minister when on tourand in travel were amended back in1969 to include Uhe costs incurredeven at her election meetings. Whyshould the puolic be induced orforced to pay for Congress sessions~5Enough is enough.

HOWlever,let Mr Ray not forgetthat he was a balTister before he be-came a Chief Minister and it is high-ly unlikely that he will continue tobe the Ohief Minister for the restof his life. For one thing he is tooyoung and for another aU is notwholly well among the Congressranks in WeS'tBengal nor among theleaders. In case he has to go backto his old profession, he should nolthrow his senses overboard and, losetrack of the loose ends of his storyhe made up last Saturday.

Why should. let Mr Ray ponder,..a CPM man try to infiItratle theCongress ptucesliipn? What couliihe have done in that procession?

'Why should a .traffic po!!iceman,even if he is a CPM policeman <I) ,try to fire on Congress students?Did he have the slightest hope thathe would not be lynched by the crowdlif \he fired on a Congressman?

How was it' tha.t two of the fiveinjured were genera II secretary andpresident of student unions? Arewe to believe that evel'y two of thefive, in thab procession, were highofficials of student unions? Stallisti-cally I it is impossible that two ofthem should become victims of fir.ing, assuming that the traffic police.man blindly shot at the crowd.

What happened is not very unclear,--nhe processionists found a youngman on the road whom they suspect-

ed as a CPM supporter. They bea~him, the usual thing, and alle.:,oedlywaDlted dhe police to arres[Jhim, an-other usual thing, without any primafacie case. Unfortunately the police-man happened to be a traffic police-man, who did not know how to arrest.Thalt was a mortal offence.

Every non-Congressman, now inWest Bengal, knows wharl. itn,Ot 'to listen to the orders ofthe Congress Iminions. Theorders of the Congressites, let us notmake a fine issue on the diS'tinctionbetween Chhat'ra 1>arishad and Con.gress, reign supreme-in schools, cine.mas, bazaars, roads. perhap a slight·mistake by a policeman-fortunatelythere are not many of this 801'1-made I!hething;a little blown up anddramatic. It called for a little weep·ing, a little blood, a little offer to reosign from the minis':er's post, a bttledenial Ito .accept t~ ~ffer, _a Iittl~reprimand {or the erring ponce-notmuch in Ithe city which has ieenkillings at tihehands of Ilhepolice Dotby dozens but by hundred, not onlyin open daylight but also in dark-ne , when bodies disappeared, when .•••young boys were \il1ed up 'againstthe wall and .shot., There .is ·onedifference: the newsmen expatiatedon t'his one-looking the other way~hen gory things were done to tilt')city earlier and are done even now.

"Only Thunder

It is not always clear who actuallyadvises whom at those august advi-sory council meel!ings, one or theothel.: of which seems to be held in

ew Delhi all the time. "hen theyare not just a plain "nimbo pani"affair, as most of them are, rhey t'endto become a free for all, providingan opportunity for pantJi'cipantsItosteam off. From this point! of view,the recerut meeting' of the CentralAdvisory Cou-neil of Industries hasbeen eminently successful', Therewas a lot of rhunder but little light. -<And neither -the Government nor in-dustry-not to speak of the publk-

DECEMBER 9, 1972

FRONTIER

A Russian Obsessionhas created a crisis. This was, how.ever, not unexpected. For Buch31'esthas le£t nobody in doubt that theRussians are breathing too heavilydown its neck. Perhaps it feels thatit will be able to secure some helpby creating a llUitter at ohe Helsinkiconference. The W"arsawPact mem-ber countries will be happy if thereis a restatement of guarantees onteni'torial integrity and non-inter-vendion in the internal- affairs ofother countries; the restatement maybe unavoidable because the two Ger-manys are not ye~ sea1tedin th~United Nations. But what such arestatement i wOItth is . 3tlybody'sguess. Slta tegic arm talks as well;IS the i sue of lowering the level ofU"OOPS in central Europe will remainbeyond the iocope of the securitconference. The two issues will bethe exclu!>ive concern of t!he USAand the Soviet Union. The raisond'etre of the conference is whetherEurope can be in ulated from warthreat. because of conflict1s'in other'lreas. 'Ve will have to watch ~ut inAssia.

ed foreign excha"nge reserves now atthe disposal of the Government. Thisis bound to lead Soa further tighten-ing of impor15 qf essential raw ma-terials which.cannot but retard indus-trial activity. The only way outseems to be to seek larger foreignassistance 'whief\, willy-niUy will reoquire a shift! in foreign relations.

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with prices showing no indination tocome down, the situation becomeslitiH more distIUrbing. If the trendcontinues, a £urther cutback in in-vestment is bound to follow. To thisrather dismal picture, a new elementl'has now been added. Import offoodgrains as proposed by New Delhiis bound to deplete further the limit-

European security has been a Rus.sian obsession since Molotov floatedthe idea of a security pact coveringthe Continent in 1954 .• In recent}ear the Kremlin bosses have beenseen scurrying the European capitalsto sell the idea of a conference onecuri y and co-operation. They areo particular about uch an assemblythat tthey waived their initial resis-tance to Ithe participation of coun-tries which do not belong tiOthe reogion. It has never been in doubtthat the Soviet Union's keenness tosanctify the status quo in Europe andtlljCreby lessen military vigilance inan area where in any case the dan-gers of war are very much reduced isto further intensify the press.ure onChina. The fear of Ru ie, fit ,isclaimed in many circles, has beenpu hing China ,to normalise relationwith the European countries, M.Maurice Schumann, Herr WalterScheel and Sir Alec Doug]las-Homehave all returned happy from theirvisits to China, obviously to the dis-comfort of Russia. In aU cases, visitsby Western Foreign Ministers haveopened many new possibiHties oftrade; but ill has not yet been pos,sible to estimate what China has tooffer and what she is to buy fromollhers. The ran~e of indllstrial andconsumer products that China i aleready supplying the world has. how-ever, impre sed many and unnen"cdsome. To return to the palaver inHelsinki, the Rumanian propo althat! all the paPticipants, irrespectiveof tbeir belonging to different mili-tary pacts, should be treated as equaland independent sov'ereig-n na'fli\-)Il

DECEMBER 9, 1972

can now daim that i idea abOut in-dustrial policy or Ithe tate of theeconomy is an~" clearer than before.There was more accusing than ad.ding, with industry and Governmentblaming each other for the sorryplight of the cou U")' econom . TheIndustrial De\e opment . hni ter, .Irubrdm3niam, who not 0 lona ago

had been all for chanaina the 1956commandment, appear to be a muchsobered man since hi un.ucce [ulencounter with the pan' left at theAhmedabad congre But the in-tensity of fee in_ exhibited b) omeprivate cton llah' t the meetingmight actuall. he him he ace hehas been 100' - for to clinch thedeal. Wheth<: e 'ould dare dois not knO\"fl, rticularh in vie\\' ofthe ri k im-ohe , but that a rethink-ing of the po'n frame i O\erduecannot be erio ly doubted anylnore.•

Ir ubramaniam had to concedet'hat Ilhe economic outlook is not en-tirely hopeCul, though rather meeklyhe tried to suggest that the curremyear has been better than the last,and llhat tbe coming one will bebetter still. InduSltrial productionduring the first nalf of 1972 has runi.5 per cent higher than last year.The problems of power, transportand Taw materials are being attend-ed to, and the deck , he tried to givethe impre' ion. are being cleared foraccelerated indu trial growtlh. Butthe indu rial scene till does notpresent an in-piring picture. Whileonly a few indu tries. notably tex·tile, have been doino-well, most othersare till ju t can-}ing on with littlevi ible enthu ia III for growth. The100\,-tlo\\'nin investment has becomethe -ing-Iemo t important factor {orthe lackhi tre talle of affair. And

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December 3, 1972

As Mrs Gandhi waits for stringlefood aid from the United States, theeconomy is getting messier and messi-er amidst inter.ministerial sniping.One section of the Moscow lobby -think Mr C. Subramaniam h36 'aweakness for the Tatas while theother think he is anti.Ta~. Some-ooe is a Talta-man up there and thejoint sector i yet to be defined fortbe edificatlion of the~inquisi,tive com-mon man. Big business is gladly own-ing up the government and the slickyoung entrepreneur who felt a littleleftist and left out! sponsor seminarson closer lndo-Ea9t Ewrppean co-operation because they know whichside the public sector bread is but.tered these days. Short af joiningthe COMECON India will have tofit its plans into the GOMECOrp.atrix. Some integration indeed.No Central Minisuer has had thecourage to ay this openly and every-one of tbem has stopped short of pro-claiming, hat they really want. MrGandhi ha been invited to Moscowfor the 55th anniv>ersary af t:!1efounding of <theUSSR but if she goe"it has to be a hurried visit because.he has to be back for Mr Siddhal'thaSankar Ray' speotacle of a Con-gress plenary session at the Saltl Lakein Calcullta. Overtures to the Unit·ed States have to be balanced withgoodwill yisit5 to Moscow. In 1966,devaluation foHowed Mrs Gandhi'svi it to Washing1ton but then deva-lual!ion was followed by her hun-iedvi it to Mo.cow. United States-Sovietrelations are indeed more cordialnow ,than they were in 1966. Never·theless balancing act's have their ownuse, .given the lobby alignments inher own party.

Minister might profess a desire fOIstrict constil'll,tional propriety an~might have ev~n assured the DMKleadership that she has .no intentionof intervening in the State. But asa Dl\fK leader has gone on record,some af the Central Ministers seemto have strange ideas and withTa Ueyrand .think nan-intervencion i.j-u·t a longer word for intervention.

The victory In Cut~ck and theaward Mrs Gandhi handed on theMukli Rules have not solved the po.litical crisis in Orissa or AndhraPradesh. Jar is she able to get herteam in New Delhi to do someserioLls wOTk. The I CPI lobby is.gunning for Mr Mohan Kumara-mangaIam, Mr C. Subramaniam andMr D. P. Dhar all the same time.Mr A. N. Haksar is the man to cu1-tivate. His is the name to drop inthe cocktail circuit. Inspired storiesof Mr Hak al"s determination to l-e-tire are followed by carefully plantedstories of friend per uading him toseek election to the Lok Sabha from'agpur where he is originally claim-

ed to come from. All Kashmiriscannot be accommodated in the Cen-tral Cahinet as Ka hmir's repre~en1a~tives. Mr Haksar can well be fobbedoff on Maharashtra if this minordetail is won-ying Mrs Gandhi. Theent~re DbaI' lobby of yore bas switch-ed allegiance to Mr Haksar after theSimla agreement. Mr Kumaraman-galam is supposed to have stoppedshort of resignation, in his clisenchant-ment with his Minis.terial positionbut be has been relentlessly sputnik-lng Madras tendering gratuitousconstitutional advice on toppling theD fK :\fini try there. The Prime

foreign intelligence agencies, in theRajya Sabha? Was there a partl}'whip against Congressmen attackingthe CIA or the KGB? And it iswell knawn that while' the CPI mem-ber did all the shouting abaut MrPiloo Mody's "I am a CIA Agent"badge, the Congress sections wereilent be ause of a dikta<l £rom a eer-tJain quarter. Even Dr ShankarDaval Sharma, the redoubtable CIAfigl;ter, looks a little sheepi h at hisevening durbars for the benefit of thePress. The Prime Minister's -deci·sion to soft-pedal the anti-CIA cam-paign is not the res.ult af a suddenreaHsatioll that the campaign hadlot its a-edibility. Iu ~toqd in Itheway of normali ation of India-UnitedState relation.

,Re-EII tl'r lJ ncle Sam

NOW is tq.e time to' forget the"green eupharia" and ler Mrs

From A Political CorrespandentIndira Gandhi's face launch a thou-sand food ship from the coasts ofthe United States. A warm messageof greetings to' Mr Nixon was follow~ed by a warmer me sage from him to,the Prime Minister on her birthdayand Mr Swaran Singh' patheticyearning [ar normal Indo-UnitedStates relations and Mr WilliamRop;ers responded to it. All that reomains, is the unrolling of the redcarpet for the new United SraitesAmbassador to Jew Delhi t.o benamed shortly.

Going by official pronouncement I

in public 'and briefing in private,,the food crisis is on and aff. It looksas though the deficit was conjuredup on paper by a Central Ministerand a top official to provide an alibifor sf:eking normalisation of relationswith ,the United States. Or it couldjust be that ,the official ,concernedhad a mOre personal motive. Bymaking it look that imports wereinevi,table he might have eminentlyqualified for a six-month extensionof his tenure hecause he bad pTCwedhimself to be t.he wizard in negotiat-ing EOQdgrain imports.

The Chid 1'1iui tel'S knPw thaitimport would be arranged and there-fore ee no need for a tough procure·ment policy which might alienate thekulaks. The Centre thinks it isextra-smart, being vague about thequantum oE imports and the foreignex hange to be earmarked for it.

The ready Washing'ton re ponse toIr S" aran ing'h' 'ge ture ugge t

a "veIl,worked out time-table forinormalisation of relations betweenIndia and the Unit<ed States. Howdoes one explain, for instance, thethe [act that no Congres memberparticipated in Friday'. discussion on

Yiew fro In Delhi

FROM A POLITICAL CORRESPO 'DENT

4 . DECEMBER 9, 1972

regional lan~'Uages as medium of ins- .tTuction has been made to appear asthe most important iss-ue before thepeople is an in .•aotion of the extra·ordinary politic 1 .sophistication ofthe ruling class s. Evoke regionalnationalism at every level, s,.t onegroup or people against the other,make them en~age in fratricidal con-flict, erect walls 'between tihem; andall these are done, using the mostprogres ive and even revolutionaryslogans t ''''horver can question thenece sity to develop and enrich thevarious lan!:!;uages of India? BU\tthe method chosen to 'enrich anddevelop' the regional languages hasbeen one of extreme cynicism. The'elite' in every regivn (tbe 'intellec-tuals', the college and universityteachers, edi·tors and men of lettersetc.) is mane an active party to theprop-amme, is actively involved inthe production of text-books, thefinancial rewards for the 'wTiti-ng' ofwhich are far beyond the dreams ofavarice. Thus, this 'elite' is made todevelop real financial ~takes in thisproblem, and then it can be trustedto keep the issue alive. Clearly, t:'hepoliticians wbo have formally legis-la1ed the witch-over to the re!?;ionallan~t1a~es a5 the medium of instruc-tion, the intellectuals who arc active-ly producin!!,' the tex,tbooks needed,the leader,s of other political partiesall of whom 'luppon udh a switch.over, the educationists and Chairmenof Important Committees, in otherwords, the whole political. intellec-tual, financial and bureaucratic eliteof the country, who despite d;ffprentpartv affiliations and seemjngly con-tradictory cla<s commitments, are al1united on one thin~: that instruc-tion for ,the <:oming generation ofstudents mllst be in the regional lan-guage. There mig'ht be (and therehave been) differences in the methodof implemp.rJ'ation, in 'the 'work>'in~out of details: there llave been evenconAirts be+ween contending region.'al nati'of'lalisms, as lthe recent onebetween Bengali and Assamese: butbe they Ben?;alis or Marathis orHindusthani or Kannadigas, they are

roublehe

refer to the well-known historic anta-gonisms that exist between the Assa.mese and the Ben~alis in Ass'lm:rather, t'hese refer to the sustainedefforts at obstructing tibe assertion ofa clear-cut, homogeneous, cuhuTal andnational identity on the part of thevarious small <Jnd weak nationalitie.of this region, by the ruling eliw inDelhi.

Much horror has been expres<edoutside as well as within As am aboutthe events of tlie past Jew weeks.Even accord in!:!;to Government's ownadmi ion (in Parliament: Ion ov-ember 14, 1972), thirt,'-one peoplewere killed durin!:!; this period, in-cluding- three "'ho died a a rest!lt ofpolice firing-, thouo-h the hig-hli~'htinp;of the e ca ualties in the newspapersha been' elective'. One cannot helpnot1(:1ng an element of hypocrisy inthe highly selective horror and con·demnation that ha followed theevents of the past few week. De-plorable as these events have been,thev have to be seen in the cont'extIQf ''<} l!'Cneral predeliction Ilowardsmeaninrrless, non-political violencethat has been a characteristic featureof the Indian situation: and in com-pari~on with the very hirrh stand'n°ds~rt bv communal ftlnatic , the lin!!uis-tic "iolence in Assam. arson andmurder included, falls far short ofthe optimum reached periodic:! 11yin the heartland of Bharat. But letthat pass.

There have been two i•.~ues in thepresent agitation. thourrh for all ap-pearance . the Ie s imoortant i~ ue-that of the choice of the nlPtliulO ofin truction-wa more 'Vi<;;ible.i Ie bi of reflection hould Tl"ake

it clear a to hm- unreal the moni.l1mi- i 0 - it h:l een e~sentiany

_ l' i lie. 1 .••.ot that a verye n J be of common peofll,~wpre

o :! ,ionately and even violentlyimoloed in tpe issue. Rut the veryfact hat the que tion of choice of the

AFTAB

Assam : Behind

DECEMBER 9, 1972

"~ ~ ~ ~;:l ~~'if"

" , As am, Assamese should bethe medium of instruction."

This sentence, soundin~ almost plain-tive, lras been of late occuningmore or less a'l a refrain in almostall tille regional bulletins broadcastiover the Gauhati station of AIR. asthe news reader briefly reports onthe 'resolutions' taken in varioussmall towns and villages in theBrahmaputra ,-alley, at/out the'Medium'. One recalls the wordsspoken by Jawaharlal in 1960 whenhe visited am in the wake of the'lauKuaJte riot' then. In a publicpeech at Gauhati. he rhetqricall'

asked: "Wher else but in A amcan A arne e be the official lano-u-av,e?" And after a pau e, a he con-tinued derisively, "In Bombay'?",there was thunderous applause. Adozen years later, the issue is onceagain with us. But with a differ-ence, though, which is only apparent.In 1960, the issue was the recognitionof Assamese as. the official languageof the State; the battle.lines weredrawn between the Ben~alis and theAssamese (with the Khasis on thesidelines cheerin~ the Ben~alis) andthe result was at best a draw. Now,the issue is the 'medium of instruc-tion', and e:oin!!' bv the decision ofthe uprp.me Court: it seems to havebeen decided in favour of Assamese.Yet, even after the Supreme Courtdecision. after the Chief finister'sconceding the maior demand of thestudents, and 'lfter tne 'u pen ion'of the movement b the studentthemselves, tem.ion still linge : therecent flare-up of trouble in Dhubriand Dibrugarh only mboli es yidd-ly the fact that things ha"e not en-tirely cooled in the whole of theBrahmaputra valley; that the 'me.dium' i~sue is. as it were, onl thetip I)f the icebere;, the ,-mota 1 ofa problem that has deeper f'JO •These 'deeper roots' of cour~ do not

all agreed that insu'ucLioll ~hould bein the regional language.

The Indian EliteBut the new rules are for Other Peo-

ple. The Indian elite which i ac-tively engaged in implementing thenew system lis Itself a product o[

,"Engii,sh education' j but j,t·i 110treally anglicisen, not even in a bogusway like the old res crowd. Thekind of anglici ation and ophi tica-tion of the presen t elUte can begauged by a browsing of the new·papers and periodicals which formthe readjn~ material of this group,from Femzna and Jttnim" Statesmanto Blitz a·nd Current. But the des-picable cultural standards of thiselite are more than compensated byits cunning. The encouragementof regional nationalism is onlyOoneof the many ways in which thiselite hopes to perpetuate its domi-nanit p06ition in (he Indian situa-tion. The English medium schoo]are there, dotted all over the coun-try, schools to which only the mostprivileged can send their children;and for the sake of those studentspassing out of these schools, therehave to be colleges as well, withEnglish as Ithe medium of instruc-tion. (Already, there has been aproposal by the UGC to start Centralcolleges in Engli h medium in everyState). I,t will be students fromthese schools and colleges, admission10 wh.ich will be automatically dosedto the vast major~ty of our peoplewho will study throu~h the mediumof the mother tongue (who them-selves forin a very small part of tbevast masses of our people) that willcontinue to rule the country. TheSons will inherit from the Fathers;this dynastic principle of course iseven n'ow present, but there is .1uSlttifle outside chance of an 'outsider'breaking into the nan-ow circle. But,this possibility will from now on·wards disappear.

Clearly, the 'medrjum lis lIe', th<1rousing of linguistic nationalism inevery State of the Union, is a roostsophisticated device of the rulingclasses to ens.ure the perpetuation of

8.0 10.

an elitist principle of education, tocompletely formalise, in the name ofmodernity and progressivism, theprinciples of heredity and caste. Thesophistication lies in the linking ofthe i Lte of the medium of instruc-tion with the question of the culturaland linguistic identity of the variousnallionalities of this country. The(device worked exceedingly well inAssam, because of some historicalfactors peculiar to this region. Bl1Jlthe crooked techniques of the rulingclasses do not in any way weakentfhe genuineness of the second of theproblems that was highlighted dur-ing the recent agitation-Jthe pro-blem of the national identity of theAssamese-speaking: 'people. Alt thi'spoint, it is almost obligat6ry to citeLenin and Stalin; but even withoutbeginning with the First Principles,one can see that tfue 'Assamese', juSJtHke any other nationality of thecountry, do constbtute a broadly re-cognizable linguistic, cultural, nation-al group; they are recognizably dif·ferent from their neighbours, andany extended may in rural AssamwiII for once and for all ~ive lie tothe belief, still popularly beld thou?;hseldom publicly expressed, that thepeople of this region, and 'tbeirlanguage and culture are only a'dee;enerate' expression of the Ben ...,gali ethos. The fact is ·that for alOone; time, ithe core of sam waartificially enlarged by the additionof various territories to it on itsperipheries, 'the e variou ten-itoriesthemselves being acquired to furtherthe 'imperial destiny' of the Empire.'I1he British had their own securityand defence problems in mind when1hey 'enlarg-ed' the ten-itory of Assam,and kept the other, even smaller andweaker nationalities of the region,forcibly within a Greater Assan.1.Our present rulers have of coursenot merely inherited the burden ofBritish India, but also the generallypaternalistic and suspiciou attitudeof the old m3!Yters towards l\he ]e s-developed nationalities of the borderreg-ions. Thus, while they enthusias.tically set aboul 'reorganizing-' therest of thf' country on a ling-uistic

basis, such a reorganization was notmerely not undertaken in the NorthEastern region, but the SRC even re-commended a single political and ad.ministrative set-up for the wholeregion. And it was only ,the emerg-ing national consciousne s of thevarious weaker nationalities of theregion that forced the issue in the1960's. The aspirations of the peo-ple of this region cannot be thwart-ted merely on considerations of 'se-curitv and defence', considerationswhicil are any way part of the im-perialist legacy; the voice of the

agas, the Khasi, the MilOS, theAssamese etc c~nnot be suppressedmerely to allow Mrs Gandhi to sleepin peace.

Is Assam 'unilingua]', or 'multilin-gual'? The an wer to the queSilionshould have been simple. The situa-tion in Assam cannot, in any way beconsidered '.unique' ; rather, the onlyuniqueness that Assam has is ~hat it-is a 'border' State, a kind of 'dis-tinction' that can hardly be allowedto be used to suppress the culturalaspirations of a people. O"er theyears, much political writin~ habeen done emphasising this 'unique-ness', or in more fanciful in tances,the 'quaintness' or rt:he 'picturesque-ness' of this region and its people.(The stereotypes of Assam in therest of India are paralleled by thestereotype of the other weaker na·tionalities of thi region that exist inthe popular imagination of theAs amese.) T]m, sam, we aretold, is a rn iniatw"e lndia; iot isa melting pot; it is a patchworkquilt of a variety of cultures, civiliza-tions, manners, speech etc.; it isthe Eastern Sentinel, a land of un-dulating Hills and Valley, wioth theMighty Brahmaputra the waters ofwhich do not flow, but ROLL. Thecliche, too, roll, but the reality isfar more pros~ic. sam I 11ristori-calIy, bas always been a narrow stripof land on either side of the Brahma-putra, as- it flows from Sadiya in the

orthea t to Dhubri in the West.Of course, the Assamese ruling classestoo have had a ve ted intere t inclinging to the terriltories that had

DECEMBER 9, 1972

writes ibjtterly 'about ,tIhe 'partiality'of M.G. Taylor, a magistrate recentlyposted in Magura. In another des-patch next week he talks about MrTaylor having 'considerably changed'for the better. Hi letter of 19December 1860 is a long catalogUe ofTayloi' misdeeds and it concludeswith ,the hope that ~e Lieutenant-Governor, highly spoken of bere',might be less unlheeding to the cries, '.of the indigo districts' than his localsubordinates '( I: 30, 36, 42 if.).

Thus, the liberal looking for per-fect justice clim'bs, 11!Oeholdby toe-hold, tlhe edifice of colonial autho-rity !from &ts·sub-divisiotial level toilts ,gubernatori~ summit. His faithin the morality' of colonial rule sur-vives aU the evidence he has of collu-sion 'between plan~ers !aQdl civiliansand of the resulting perversion of dieprocesses of ~he law. These ·latterare sought to be explained away byhim as mere aberrations of an other-wise fauItles system. Or, as Dina-bandhu Mitrta uggests more thanonce in' his play, there are goodsahebs aDjdl bllldJ s.hebs:. 1I1e goodones run the Government and the badones run the indigo factories.Savitri, the Kayastha matron in Nul-darpan, spelt this out in terms of herown understanding of social distinc-tions w'hen she described the plantersas the white men's chandals (ActI, Sc. 4). And in this she came veryclose to the distinctions that the moreso~isticated Tattvabodhin..i Patrikamade a decade ago between 'bhadraEnglishmen of good character' whonever took lip the indigo trade and

7

elite of Delhi, but Crom the regionsof revolutiona1l fervour lying .to thenorth and the east oC the region.Only that waf can the full' poten-tialities of lhe peopleo£ the regionbe realized, im,tead oC being wasted111 frarricidal conflicl .

their situation with the eyes of theruling classes in DeIhL One canonly hope that the coming genera-tions in this }'egion will turn theireye more inward, and deri,'e the in-l>piration for tulure developmentsnOt from the corrupt and totttering

RANAJIT GUHA

millionsIn real life, too, we 'find some of

the most radical of the contempo-rary liberals falling prey to the samesort of illusion. Even HarishMukherjee appears to have 'been,enthusiastic about .the civil ,servantsas late as February 1860 when thestage was alrea1dy set for the firstround of jacqueries (7: 149).Sisirkumar Ghose's despatches' to theHindoo Pa/riot document this illusionin detail. In mid-August, 1860, he

ultimate triumph of BritiSh justice isbased on the illusion that fue law isfair in absolute terms i1nd all oneneeds is the fairy godfather of an im-partial bureaucracy to make it avai-laDle for aU. It is a measure of thisiUu ion that the Basu brothers in

eel-darpan remain unslhaken in theirfaith in the Lieutenant-Governor andthe Commissioner despite the alto-gether unwarranted imprisonment oftheir ageing father. When someonesuggests ~at the magistrate who sentold Golok Basu to jail is no morewicked than the Commissioner, Bin-dumadhab flares up. 'Sir,' he says,'you know not the Commissioner; and.therefore, you spoke thus of him.The Commissioner is very impartial,and is always desirous of the impro-vement of the natives'. He and hisbrother both 'believe that the Gover-nor is just on the point of quashingthe sentence so that their father canbe' set free (Act IV, Sc. 2). Thei;urtain goes up on the next scene toreveal Golok Basu's corpse hangingin ihis cell.

been joined to ssam by lIbe Briti h,and one still comes acros expressionsof wistful regret, barely concealingthe rapacity' beneath, at the 'loss'

am ha uffered oyer the year$due to the machinations of ewDelhi, Tribal leader, Verrier ElwinSec. The. ame e elile too viewed

DECDfBF

Neel-Darpan : A Liberal's View Of A Peasant Revolt-II

INa foreword. (left out 01Madhusudan's translation) Dina-

bandhu defines what Ihe wants hisplay to achieve. This is to influencethe indigo planters to turn away from'self-interest' to 'philanthropy' so that"Britain" face may be aved, for theircruel ways 'h e gi"en the Briti h abad name'. He condemn theirgr ,rapacity and Ihypocrisy, 'outnote hopefuly 'the ign of a newdawn of ryots' happiness'. 'J1hese aredescribed a follows:

'The great. Queen Victoria, com-passichate mother of the prajas,considers it improper that herchildren should be suckled by herwet-nurses. So she has taKen themup in her arms and is feeding themat her own breast. The even-tempered, wise, courageous and libe-ral Mr Canning has become theGc;)vernor-General. The high-min-ded and just Mr Grant Who puni-shes the wicked, protects the inno-cent, .and shares with the ryotstheir weal and woe, has been appo-'[nltt!td .Lieubenant-Governar~ Andtruthful, astute, non-partisan offi-cials like Eden, Herschel and othersare gradually coming to blossom aslotuses in the lake of the civilservice. It must, therefore, beclearly evident frc:Jm all this thatwe have an indication now of thegreat souls mentioned above takingup soon the Sudarsan disc of justicein order to end the unbearablemisery of the ryots who have falleninto the clutcltes (If the wickedindigo planters' (8: 1).This d lara'oo f aith in the

'the cruel, abhadra men' among themwlho did (4: 129). Collaborationbetween the bhadra Jlengalis and thebhadra Englishmen ,,!as, clearly, theneed of the hour.' In emPhasizingthis Neel-darpall was simply uphold.ing an ideological tradition alreadywell established among OUr liberalsby the middle 9f the last century.

'Loyalty Lota.?The urge for coUa"ooJ:fationruns

tlhrough the entire range of Dinaban-dhu's literary works. The theme ofthe British conquest of India whichfor so many of our patriotic writersserved as a cue for strident anti-British declarations, occurs in IbisSuradhuni Kavya as a vehicle of loya-lism. The sa·d maiden haunting thegrove at PIa sey was for him not asymbol of the loss of Bengal's inde-pendence but tlhe fall of the hatefulMughals (8: 363 'If). T,he ic.areersof Sirajuddowla and Mir Kasim pro-vided Girischandra Ghose with ma-lerial for editious plays about thecollusion 'Oetween foreign invadersand native traitors against Bengalimonarchs. DinabandJhu describesSirajuddowla as a monster who richlydeserved !his cruel end (8: 362 f).And he invests his account of thedefeat )of Mir Klasim's troops andtlhe rescue of the Nawab's enemy,Krishnachandra Ray, by the Britishwith tbe aura of a miracle compara-ble to the rescue of Bibaratchandra'sSundar by the goodess Kali and ofMukundaram's Srimanta by the god-dess Chandi (8: 360). Still anotheridol of 'a Illter-day nationalism-NanaSahib-was den~unced by him as a'brute and a coward, While he was nodifferent from !any ,other Bengalibaboo of his time in representing therebellion of 1857 as' a senseless orgyof violenec (8: 345). For the per-manence of the raj and the removalof all threat to it were 4'or him highlydesirable ends ) (8: 443). And ifthese attitudes are about the sameas those held by other stalwarts of theBengal Renaissance, DinabandJhuperhaps excelled many of them inthe obsequiousness with which becould put tlhese .into. words. Any-

DECEMBER 9, 1972

The Hero As A Junior LandlordThis defeatism, leading, in fact, to

defeat, is well illustrated in Neel-elm·pan. It is the story of a minorlandlord family, the Basus of Swaro-pur. It ibas as its hero the elder sonof the family, Navinmadhab. Undernormal conditions his annual incomewould amount to seven bundredrupees in rents alone and his otherassets to fifteen warehouses for corn,sixteen bighas of garden land, twentyploughs and. fifty day labourers. Hecould afford to celebrate the Pujas ingreat style, throwing large banquets,distributing gifts, entertaining hisguest with music and jatra (Act ITI,Sc, 2). They grow enough food tofeed the family for the -whole yearand still have a good '<ieal left over(Act I, Sc. 1). They make a bit nfmoney by selling rou taro. and tobaccowhich they grow tbenlselves, and allthis income from land is supplemen-ted by usury (Act ill, Sc. 2). It isan index both of Navinmadhab's cul-ture and 'his resources that he canafford to have a siesta in the middleof the working day (Act I, Sc. 4).

His affluence impres es by contrast.Sadbucharan, described as a matab.bar, i.e. principal ryot of the village,bas only one and a half ploughs andtwenty bighas of land (Act I, Sc. 3)of which about balf has been renderedunproductive by salt water (Act LSc. 2). He cannot afford to have hishouse protected by a fence, so thathis wife and daughter are quite de-fenceless once the myn have left forthe fields (Act I, Se. 4). Old GolokBasu can boast of growing enouglbIllustard to meet his family's annualrequirement of oil and still have sixtyto seventy rupees worth of seed tospare ( ct T, Sc. 1). The matabbar'swjfe must beg for a little oil from thekolus (oil-men) 'Defore she can lightup for the eyening (Act I, Sc. 4).And to complete tlbe picture of therelative affluence of the Basus, wehave in the play the description of anagricultural labourer, a Tikiri bycaste, who ifepresenting 'as he doesthe very lowest depth of t!he villagesociety, comes from a family thatnever po ses ed a single plough and

This had a rather sinister conse-quence for the historiography of therin.digo re.:>ellion. Adopted by manygenerations of baboos as a theme forillleir literary and artistic self-ex-pression, this peasant revolt came toacquire the respectability of a patrio-tic enterprise led by benevolent land-owners like Navinmadhao with pea-. ants like Torap following them withall the loyalty, strength and intelli-gence of a herd of cattle. (Torap isin fact likened to a buffalo in ActY, Sc. 2). The emphasis has thusbeen lai·d on the unity of interest,hel1lween the peasant and hinative exploiter against a common,foreign enemy. This \has helped tomask the truth, lfirst, about the fiercecontest between the landed magnatesand the common peasantry for the ini-tiative of the struggle against llhe plan-ters, and secondly, about the defea-tism and the general lack of a fight-ing spirit which characterised theupper classes, particularly tbose 'ofintermediat,;: means', in this struggle.

one who wants this confirmed maydo so by turning to bis poem, 'Loya-lty Lotus or Rajbhakti Satada]'(8: 437 f).

That such a loyalist writer with aplay ~ich so emphatically ~pholdsthe raj, should come to be regardedas patrioitc, throws a curious light onthe character of Indian nationalism.It indicates that our nationalism basin tif an ideological element with afairly low anti-imperialist content.Thi element represents the contribu-tion of that section of our bourgeoi-sie who are interested in oppo ingimperiali III but cannot! do 0 firml)and consistently owing to the histori-cal condition of their development.So tlleir antagonism is compromisedby "aciUation and expresses itselfspa modically. MiddJe-class Ben-galis in search of a radical traditionduring' one !luch spasm that culmi-nated. in the swadeshi movement, set-tled on Neel-darpan as a patriotictext t(9: 274). We thus got what'we deserved: a loyalist play glorified;t a manifesto of pet1ty-bourgeoisradicalism.

•• ..1R

throughout the twentieth century-and this indude' even such a pet"cep-tive historian J Suprakash Ray( I0: 400) - Tohp has been the sym-bol of peasant insurgency. That thishas been so reveals a good deal aboutthe baooo's mental image of peasantsand rebel. For, he author ofNeel-d(1rplan Ij1tlSendowed this agri-cultural. labourer witfl so much of hisown virtues of liberalism and loyalismthat he has, in fact, turned !him intoa perfect petty bourgeois. SivnathShastri records how on the publica-tion of the play Torap imme~iatelyendeared himself to the readers. Oneis not surprised. What can be moreendearing to the Calcutta intelligent-sia of 1860 than to read about some-one who thinks like themselves andis helped. by hi fictional existenceto perform uclh brave and noble

<leeds a beating up a wicked whiteplanter and saving a pregnant peasantwoman from his lust?

Act 11, Scene 1, pJ:"ovidesus withsome details oE Torap's 5deology.

He is seen as a prisoner here in thewar<:hOllseof Begunberey indigo fac-tory. Four other ryots are his fellowcaptives. Of tlhese at least one is anagricultural labourer, the Tikiri whomwe have already met. The rest, toOare either labourers or poor peasants.Torap dominates the conversation asone who ooviously is a leader of thevillage poor and deals witlh the doubtsand. questions of the others with acertai'!1 amount of kJlowledgeabilita~dt authority. One of the rvotsseems to have little faith in - thesalhebs. He was twice made theVictIm of false criminal cbarges, thesecond time by the white planter ofthe Bhabnapore factory whom somepeople consider LO be a nice fellow.Torap .defends the salheb against theryot. The ryot must have done some-thing wrong to merit his punishment,he say, for the Salheb of Bbabna-pore never raises a false distufoance .••Had all Sahebs been of the samecharacter with him then none would!have spoken 111 of the Sahebs'. Theryot retorts by pointing out that thisnice saheb has in fact been found tohave illegally -detained seven persons

The Charaderization of TorapTorap i largely responslole for

Dinabandhu's fame as a 'progressive'writer. For each 'successive genera-ion of middle-class Bengali radicals

Sc. 2). Yet in a play supposed tobe sympathetic to tJhe peasantry, mo-neylendlOg, that scourge of the ruralpoor, appears as the theme for a pane-gyric (Act V, SC. I). 'The money-lender is a well-wisher of his debtors',we are toki (Mad,busudan Datltamisses out on this key sentence in histranslation). Or, again, 'The Maha-jans never bring an action againsttheir debtors'. The two speecheswhere t'he e nuggets occur are quiteexplicit in upholdAng mahajani notmerely for it~ alleged superiority todadni as favoured by the planters, butin absolute terms for the advantagesit hold [01" the ryots. In defendingmahajani in Vhe words of the dewanwho with all his wickedness is stillrepresented. as sympathetic to theryots and is therefore regarded as un-reliable by the planters DinabandhuMitra set himself up not only as adefender of the contemporary land-lord-usurer represented by Navin-madhab, his hero. A 'progressive'writer, he was at t!he same t4ne strik-ing a blow tor an emergent class who,as Kling points out, bene!fited mostfrom the rebellion: 'Ultimately theysnatched the fruits of victory fromthe peasants and the ~nidlgo distur-bances mark ;,the transfer of IpOwerfrom planter to moneylender in LowerBengal' (7,: 75) .

We Ihave alrea<CIynoticed how sOmany of the political beliefs andsocial attitu<ks of the Basu familywere almost identical with thosecherished by Dinabandhu Mitra him-self. Tlbis is of course quite appro-priate in view of the author's affinityto his protagonists in class terp1s Itadds greatly to the authenticity of theBasu family's ideological portrait aspre ented in the play. What. \how-ever, comes through as less thanauthentic is the ideological poiirai-ure of the peasantry. A close lookat Dinahandhu' characterization ofTorap hould make thi clear.

In Praise of UsuryFar (rom exposing the Ie bene-

volent sioe of the Barobaboo' tran-actions as a landlord, the play goeso far as to make a virtue of an evenmore sinister aspect of his role in thevillage economy-that of a money-lender. We ~er ~m Act TIl.Scene 2, that u ury is, for the Basus.a subsidiary though In0t meagre.source of income. We gather. too.that e en the mataboar's family-notto mention others poorer till--maveto share their ha amed incomewith the mahajans every year ( ct I.

he has no land no cattle, no cow-shed (Act IV, Sc. 1).

Neel-darpan is a play about thisBasu family. But it is not a playthat invites us to witness the authen-tic aspect of the economic and socialoperations of the e not inconsiderableexploiters in a village of impoveri-shed pea antry where even a matab-bar ryot is no better off than a mid-dle peasant of tihe poorer sort. Theauthor appears to be primarily con·cerned to emphasize the paternalisticelement in the given agt1arian rela-tionship. Navinmadhab is so utterlydedicated to the welfare of the ryotstJlat the planter's dewan is temptedto jibe, 'That braggart is become likea Christian Missionary' (Act I, SC. 3).Even in the midst of his worst trialsour hero sticks to his principle that'to do good uVto others is the highe tvirtue' (Act II, S. 3). And theryot persecuted by the planter turnto him a their pro ider. An inno-cent peasant dragged away from thefields by the guardians of the law]accompanied by tile plal1iter'1;,hire-ling~, cries out to Barobaboo (asNavinmadhab is called by the villa-

- gers), 'Preserve my two children;there is no one else to feed them'(Act II, Sc. 3), and sure enough, inthe next scene, we have tihe dewancomplaining to the planter hoW Baro-baboo was indeed providing food forthe families of four of the arrestedryots and having their lands cultiva-ted at ibis 9wn expense with his ownploughs, cattle and hired labour(Act III. Sc. 1).

DECE~lBER 9, 19i2

the struggle raging in the indigo dis-tricts, the author does not allow hisrealism for which he is so highlyrated by the literary critics, to getthe 'Oetter of his philosophy. WlhenTorap at last succeeds in laying hisbaods on the wicked junior planter,Navinmadhab, our Ihero-, tries to rea-son with him: 'What is the use ofbeating mm? We ought not to becruel, because they are so' (Act Dr,Sc. 3). And it is a measure of Navin-madlha"o's sense ~f (values tha~ heallows himself to get into a 'fight witha planter who insults his dead father'smemory but not with the ot1herplan-ter who tries to rape a pregnant pea-sant girl. In any case, his advice isnot lost on Torap who, after he hasbitten off Mr Wood's nose in theaffray involving Barobaboo, saystfbat he would have i~icted furtherphysical punishment on the planter ifhe had a chance, ''but I would. nothave killed him, Ihe is a creature ofGod' (Act V, Sc. 2).

Torap, Pseudo-RehelThis .highly ,sanctimonious Itone,

this neatly drawn distinction betweenchastisement and annjhilation cancome only from one who can affordnot to have his hatred spilling over,not to indulge in 'excesses' when theplanters are looting, burning, rapingall aroun<l. This cannot be the atti-,tude of ,:an injdigo peasant of 1860involved, by all accounts, in a mostsanguinary oattle for survival. To-

rap is a pseudo-peasant and a pseu<lo-rebel.

Note how, in the first place, hedisplays none of the initiative withwhich aU ~ontempotary observersCJ1edi,Othe /Peasena rebels. In fact,

he hardly ever confronts the plantersOn his own. On eaclh of the two

'Jfai\1i'l(fl.~~-~~i(j~-J11f~~ ~~~

9ftm)~ ~ llf ~~~1~ ~tfxt\!~C~K~

~C~ C~ ~;r ~••~o 9Rl~

in(jigo once for all-the struggle hadby then nearJy gone beyond the'bounds of the i!nme~ate~econoIDlciSsues involved-t'be rebel peasant,thought up by a luminary of BengalRenaISsance, i busy trymg to reloonthe planters: he still seems to behoping that they would give up theirpredatory ways and :take up indigocultiVatiOn as a regwar agricultural.pursuit in wbich, Torap assures them,they can depend on the cooperationof ttie peasantry (Act ll, ~. I) I Andhe carnes on with thIS theme-oac-ked by a nodding assent from PodiMOlf.'<:tni,the 'v~l.l[e man's procuress(Act U, Sc. 3) -right up to the res-cue scene when aiter he has beatenup Mr Rogue, he still finds it usefulto try and persuade him to 'carryonYOur bl1smess by mutual consent'(Act Ill, 8c. 4). l1his is. not anangry, insurgent peasant's voiceadoressing an enemy, it is a baooo'svoice supplicating the saheb to cometo terms with the turbulent chashasbefore the}' get out of hand.

Wbich brings us to the question ofviolence. The widespread use of vio-lence by the ryots against the com-bined forces of planters, police andtroops is a fact about the indigo re-bellion recorded in all contemporaryevidence. A few words from a localobserver, such as those of SisirkumarGhose from Jessore in August 1860,can even at this distance in time sum'up for . us a quickel).ing ~ituation:Tbe planters are collecting revolvers,ammunition and lathials ... white theviUagers are ~athering :c1u'Os. and

spears ... ' (I: 26). Neel-darpan,published only a few weeks later, hasnothing in it even remotely approa-ching the ~oiJed tension of these lines.This is so because the author is simplynot responsive to the music of aclash of arms oetween the peasantaod his oppressors.

It is not that there is no violencein tlhe play. There is indeed, a lotof it in the form of the planters'terror backed by the official enginesof repression. But J:he Itlheme ofretaliatory violence by the victims iskept firmly under control throughoutt!he text. For whatever the reality of

including a small child and that hetill continue to rob the peasants of

their cattle. Torap changes thesubject, but not the th~me. 'As soonas tbey get a Saheb .who is a goodman,. Ihe says, 'they want to destroyh,un'. WluQh raises Ithe inter~sungquestion or Ithe d:istincQon R~weengOOd and oad ~aheb~ a JdIstmctJOnUle otber ryot is unable to grasp.Torap explaIns this in terms slm1Jarto those used by the matron of theBasu family: the magistrates are tbeSCions of i respe~aole families(baronoker chhawal) whIle tlhe plan-ters are the low-caste people of ..tng-land (belmer Chhotonok). 'Then',quips in another peasant, 'lhow did tbelate Governor Saheb go about pHthe Indigo Factories oeing feasted likea bridegroom just belore the cele-bration of the marriage~' The much-harassed ryot Who is still not ableto shake ot[ his mistrust for the whiteman, suggests that l.he late GovernorSaheo. Utat is Halliday, judging by thecordiality of his relations with theplanters, musl have owned 'someshare J lin ~e Indigo Company'.Torap dismisses this as absurd,but unable to say much in favourof Halliday, passes quickly onto his successor who provides himWIth another toehold for Ibis undaun-ted loyalty to the raj: 'If God pre-serves our present Governor, then weshall be able to procure something forour sustenance; and the spectre ofIndigo ~hall ,no more hang on ourshoulders' .

The Peuut AA a BabooThis Torap has nothing in common

with a peasant up in arms against hisoppressor. He, like the baboo whocreated !him, is full of a sweet rea-sonableness which is ready to exone-rate the colonial regime for all ~tscrime\'! against the peasantry. Forevery bad planter, J bl¥A magistrate,bad Governor named by the harassedembittered ryots, our so-called rebelpeasant has a good planter, a goodmagistrate and a good Governor toname. While by the autumn of 1860masses of armed, angry peasants werefigtlting to ,end the c~ti~tion -.of

10

DECEMBER 9, 1972

TO one long in the. Planning Com-mission pent and on whom

some of its patois inevitably getsrubbed off, this book is a marvellousinstance of investment support, tech-nical know-how and collaboration,making one of the most spectacularbreakthroughs ever known in literaryhistory.

Few would have -ever imagined,had this book been never published,that the amhor of the two books ofpoems, Pmt1'ock (1917)· and Poems(1 !J20) ,-which had brought abouta revolution in English diction andversification as unique as ever wit-nessed in any previous period oCEnglish poetry, and the author ofwhich had already produced some of-the most impeccable verse that couldbe thought of in that glorious tradi-tion, and which nobody would everdream of editing" by way of even acomma--so immaculate and finalthey seemed, so daring ana true theirtlhought-W,ould ever need a Virgi~and a Cavalcanti, rolled in one in thefigure of Ezra Pound, ~l miglior tab-bro, to guide him through ,successived}"afts of the poem of the century,The Waste Land, to a point whereEliot himsel£ arrived, miraculouslytransported to a new plane of excel-lence altogether, never to committhe kind of mistakes and, worse stilI,lapses of taste that lie strewn across,this boole.

The introduction written by Eliot',wife, Valerie, tells us gently yet vivid.ly how wilthout the small amounts oCmoney that Quinn and Pound wereso hard put to find excuses for help-ing Eliot with throughOUt 1916-23,without the slightest suggestion ortrace of patronage, but rather in a

B.o"~R'f}ie••SO KRISH A, lAS WHEN HE

ADMO ISHED ARJUNAThe Waste Land: A Facsimile and

Transcript of the Original DrafitsIncluding the Annotations of EzraPound.

Edited by Valerie Ellol!.Faber !Ie: Faber. £5.00.

(Concluded )

ram.

REFERENCES :(1) Jogesh Chandra Bagal (ed),

Peasa~t R.evolution in Bengal.(2) Bankim Rachanavali, SahityaSamsad edition, (vol. 2. 5(3) Benoy Ghose (ed), Samayik-patTe Banglar SamajchitTa, vea. 1.(4) Ibid, vol. 2.(5) Ibid, vol. 4.(6) Indramitra, Karunasagm' Vidya-sagar.(7) Blair Kling, The Blue Mutiny.(8) Dinabandhu Rachanavali, Sahi-tya Samsad edition.(9) Reisner & Goldberg, Tilak andthe Struggle for Indian Freed.cnn.(10) Suprakash Ray, Bharater KTi-

shak Bidroha 0 Ganatantrik Samg-

(11) Sivnath Shastri, RamtanuLclhiri 0 Tatkalin Bangaaama;.

tion, the i(1ea occuts to -his son soodafterWards when he finds the old manthreatened with imprisoDDl.ent underthe new law (Act II, Sc. 3). Thistemptation t9 run away is only equal-led by all the principal protagonists'efforts to placate the planters, reasonwith them and arrive at a compro-mise-and failing all this, to try anddefend the!llselves by litigation. Theonly character to take a stand oftotal detfiance is a poor ryot who,even as he is forcibly led away from,the \fie~~ asserts that he 'wouldrather have my body rot in the jailthail any more prepare the Indigo ofthat white man' (Act II, ~. 3). Butthis one firm voice of a genuinely re-bellious peasant is drowned in thedborus of petty-bourgeois wailing ofthe rest of the cast. In the end thereis nothing in all their faith in the law,the civil service, the Lieutenant-Go-vernor and the Queen that can savetlhe Basus of Swaropur from beingutterly ruinoo. Neel-darpan, writtenby a liberal in the midst of a peasantrevolt, shows where the liberal standsat the tinte of a peasant revolt: hestands close to Vhepower of the Stateseeking cover behind the law and thebureaucracy. It also lshows whathappens to !him if he does so: he isdestoryed.

occasion when he actually gives afight, he does so a the Barobaboo'sstrong-arm man. The author endowsibim with only as much militancy aswould be needed to highlight the over-riding quality of all-that is, his loy-~alty to ~aVlinmadhab. And ;it ti.sprecisely because of this-and here ISa second important thing to noteaiJout him-his militancy has little incommon with that of :the rebels of1860. AU contemporary accountsagree on the highly organised andsteady combativeness of the insurgentpeasantry, particularly when they suc-ceeded in seizing the initiative of thestruggle from the big landlords andthe lesser gentry, as for instance in~hat minor epic of Ja peasant warfought against the Aurangabad Con-cern (7: 91 if). By contrast, Torap'scomiJativeness .•appears to be spas-modic. It i not disciplined becauseit is n« informed by the consciousnessof the rural proletariat. Gifted by

_ his liberal maker with a petty-bour-geois consciousness ibis militancy ex-plodes in brief discontinuous out-bursts. What goes well with this is the

- politics of the bomb aoo of middle-class terrorism, and not the politicsof a revolutionary peasant war. Fin-ally, it should be noted tlhat he is noteven all that brave: he confesses tobeing mightily scared at the sight ofNavinmadhaiJ being !hit, on his headby the planter, and in his very lastspeech he says: 'Let me now hidemyself inside the bam; I slhall fly offin the night'. (Act V; Sc. 2). Thisdoes not strike one as exactly theentiments of :l peasant hero, a fish in

water, at tihe height of a popular re-bellion sweeping the countryside.

The defeatism of ·(fo~'s partingwords represents the spirit of the play

. as a whole. Forced into a confron-tation with the power of the planters,he wants to run away as soon aspossible. He is not the only one toido so. At one point jSadhucharan,too, thought of leaving the village withhis entire family in order to takerefuge in a neiglioouring zamindar'sestate (Act I, Sc. 2). And althoughin the opening cene Golok Basurejects all advice in favour of deser-

..DECEMBER 9, 19;2 11

FRO I R

,lale of thank lulnc, , Eliot's writingmig-ht have irrepar<:bly wilted andeyen dried up c.omp1etely. But {hiskind of story of nursing and sustain-ing a geniu through oppressivepenury i not without its parallel\; inhistory. What is perhaps unique is.hat a major p!Jet should have sopersi:Jtently .edited, ~aded and ad.monished another major and rivalipoet to a point where the pupil wasenabled to outreach the master increative performance through: lessonslearned and in truments acquired asgenerous and o'ratui,tous gifts fromtfle master himseH who, far fromcharging a price, did not even deljmand gratitude. This surely is anexample of selflessness unsurpassedin the history of creaJtive wTiting andValerie Eliot has earned everybody'sgratitude by redeeming Pound fromhis post-World War II limbo andputting him on a pedestal' uniquelycarved by himself in history.

Eliot's original drafts, the correc-tions and annotail:ions made word byword, line by line by Ezra Poundwith a fine tooth comb, and the finalversion of the First Ediltion as print-ed in j922 are a .unique example ofhow a mil-jor poet, whp eventuallyproved like Cavalcanti to Dante inhistory a lesser poet, purged anothermajor poet of major lapses of tasteand judgment, compelied hIm totransform his diction, and. finally gavehim a llfue and irreversibJoe feel of

••.... every phraseAnd sentence that is right (where

every. word is at home,Taking. its place to ,upport the

others,.The word neither diffident nor

osten t~ious,An easy cgmrnerce of the old and

the new,The common word exact without

vulgarity,The formal word precise Imt nOl

pedantic,The complete consort dancing to-

gether)Every pht'ase and every sentence is

an end and a beginning".The proof comes right on the first

pag-e of the original draft of ,The

DECEMBER 9, 19i2

Pou.nd PUl a circle around 'may'and ..cralched it Ollt wilth the com-ment: 'make up yr. mind you Tire-sias if yOll know, know damn well orelse vou don't.'

:acre i one on propriety of obser-vation. Eliot had written:~

by the.,

in Ox-

'A lOllch of art is 'givelnfalse

Japanese print, purchasedford Street.'

.\nd gropes his way, finding 1hetail'S unlit;

And at the corner where' thetable j

Delays only to urinate and spit.'

Pound scored out the la9t two linesand wrote 'probably over the mark'.

Thi one urges clarity and preci-ion, Eliot had written:

'Across her brain one half-formedthought may pass:

"'Veil now that's done, and [ amO'lad it's ·over." ,

For the uncertain'When Lil's husba.nd was coming

back out of the TranspoI1tCorps,'

the fin.ality of Pound's exact word'When Lil's husband was demob-

bed'.One wishes it were possible to

Pound cored ouot the second halfof the econd entence, with the re.mark 'not in that lodging hou e?'.

Devastating on ~mprecision, hescored 'perhap , off the sentence 'Per.haps his inclinations touch the stage'with the comment 'Perhaps bedamned'.

Throughout hi life Eliot musthave been greatly moved by thestupendous Ulysses canto (XXVI) ofDan1te's Inferno. lin his originaldraft of Death by Water Eliot hadput in a very long passage imitativeof the passage on Ulysses' hipwreckin Dan.te, which Pound once againscored out entirely a,nd put a final,s'hort "OK from here on I tlz'ink" at'After the torchlight red on sweatyfaces' which now forms the openingline of fl. ni/wl The Thunder Said.

Waste Land which make~ one marvel;how Eliot should have ever passed'it, so smart, even cheap and inconse·quel1ltial it now 'eerns, in print,whidl Ezra Pound ju t scored ou~from top to bottom with one strokeof the pencil, after having attemptedminor impro\'ement in phrasing andridiculed jingle with his own jingleslike '1\1eet me in the hado\\ of thewatermelon Vine Eva Iva ya Em-maline' or 'Tease, queeze, lovin' &wooin' Say Kid What're y' d.oin' ?',and came straighit to what.i no\,"one of the best known openings ofthe. century's verse in I. The B1l1'jalof the Dead: 'April is the crueHe tnioMh, breeding .. ,.•..

A similar cruel excision, so it musthave seemed to Eliot at the time whomust have .taken pride in writing it,but which again unerringly provedthe maturer judgment and the better'taste q£ It'he editor, was the entireopening' page of III. Th(! Fire SeT-mOll, which Ezra Pound cratchedOlll again with the comment: 'Popehas done thi .0 well that you can-not do it better; and if you meanthis a a burlesque, yOll had bettersuppress it, for you cannot parodyPope unless you can write betterverse ,than Pope-and you can't.'Here, too, Pound once again ledEliot to the overwhelming opening'entence: 'The river's tent is broken,the laS't fingers of leaf. , , '

But what one suspects spelt thesudden and irreversible breakthroughfor Eliot were the far shorter pa sages,the specific phrases an~1 even theingle words, and the devastating

lunges that Pound made in the mar-gins to drive his point home andwhich obviously had such profoundlessons for Eliot that he never turnedback and which put him over thehump once and for all.

These con-ections and lunges willremain enshrined in literary historybut it is difficul,t even in this briefreview to l"esist some of the mostdelect'able ones:

Here is one on lapse of taSltein theoriginal draft

'Be tows one final, patronising ki s

j12

among the partisans for Samyapud,succeeds in' liquidating the liquida-tors with the hf!lP of "peace-keepingcitizens" until his demon hordesoccupy Kalinaglni, sending all theaforementioned characters to theirdeath. liut oon a6ter, the peoplerise in revolt. wi~h a new leader(Nrisingha or ~~an-Lion) formed outof the mutilated bodies of the charac-ters 'who fought among 'themselvesto their own ruin. One does notknow for ·tlre, but Prahlad, whorouse:. the 'people, may be the doctorhim elf. .

11 (lhis may seem 110 more thaII aimple-minded !Jut hon,e t and well·intemioned Jday-dreaming. Bu,t no,there' i~ a Ibore s~rious disorder inthe playwright's imagination. In amoralizing yein, the observations ofThucydides }:m corruptlion and dis-order in Athen during' the Pelopon-ne ian war (which irad Chau·dhuri also quoted in hi fulmina-tions against leftist "anarchy'" in'West Bengal), of Baishampayan to,Janmejoy about' how unnatural viceand depravity led the jadavas to des-troy themselves in mutual warfare(Mahabhamt) Maushal Parva), of a.Buddhist Brahmin' (sic) deploringthe in-fighting among Ithe' Buddha'sfollowers leading to the decay of13uddhism in the land of the Bud-dha's birth-all these voices of wis-dom of the East and West are inton-ed from ,backstage to draw -a lessonfrom the happenings' in Kalinagari.

But the leSson"wlhich is not drawnis that the ci~i]izations of the pa t

.aU went under from their inherentand inescapable tontI'adiCtion. Totheil" greci't credit, Thucydides" andthe Greek CtagiCpoet saiv the doomof theh: civilization as something ine-vi,table, a part of its inexonible fateworking "r!hroug"hhubris, To drawa parallel between the fall of ancientc:ivilizatiom and the catastrophethl'eatening Kalingal\i - makes 'enseonly if we push it to its logical con-clusion. THe crisi in Kalinagari isa result of the same contradictionwhich has, so fai', caused the' decayof all civilizations. The partisans forSamyapnri are involved in this con-

begins, the .leader of the gJ·oup. whoplays the doctor now, continues hisSourveyand commentary. not only ast.he original play-maker but in hisnewly as umed role as well. Every-time he intervenes, it i· uncertainwhether he doe!> a a leader of thesurvey-team or chief of the nursing-horue. Hi function in the outerframe and Ithe inner play is identical,though he ;ha apparently two dif-ferent roles to play. The roles arenever kept separate allowing him topass (rom one to the other ; they aresimply conIu ed, This shows aninadequate mastery of Brechtiantechnique and the resulting muddlemakes the performance. a, fumblingand amateurish affair. The actinghardly matches the daring technicalventnre.

But the mOst 'erious defeot is inthe conception of the pIa)' it~e]f or,to be more precise, in the very moralof thi moral allegory. Kalinagarii a feudal ociety lately ruled by analien power but now abandoned tothe greed and corruption of ilts na-tive rulers. There are certain~haracters "'1'0 represent a piration .for a free and equal society, wilthmutually exclusive }:ecipes for itsaltamment. They are all at logger-heads, each trying to undo the otherin h·isown way, never trusting, neveragreeing to compose their differencesby rea oned argument. But for theirimplacable hate and suspicion of oneanother, Kalinagari might have' beentransformed by nOw into'Samyapuri,the Land of Equality. All thesecharacters are easily identified withthe principal political parties olIceharing power "in the tWO United

Front C~o\'ernmeIl1t!>in 'Vest Bengal-plu the so·called exu'em.ist factiun .One wonder who the benevol'Cntdoctor may be-so eager to l'estoretheir unity and believing such unityto be the key to utopia. The eupho-ria which Ithe Bengali left intelli-gem ia had evinced in the late six-tie i' hardly dead yet.

But let th<lJtbe. To return to thestory, the Demon.King Hiranya-kashipu, taking advantage of themutual bickering and liquidation

DEGE~J8FR 9. 19;_

HITE GHOSH

T HE Pavlov l·nstitute atyaamstha' Aali7lagm'i is a poli-

tical allegory. In what is meant tobe a clinical inye tigation of mur-derous hate and dissen ion amongst"progl'es!>ive" (orc , a few theatricalroles an: made up aod acted out inimprovised situation. :\ con(u ion,howe\rer, o'eep~ into the method oEpresentation. When the play-actingbegins, we have no idea of what the.per£ormm are in real life, that iin the external play. If lthey aremeant to be the J'esearch team of thePavlov Institwte itself, trying to un-der tand a political situation b)\playing it out in a conscions make-belie\'e. thi i- leEt vague and doubt.ful. In any ca , they cannot havebeen an ordinal" theatrical troupe.And then. e\'en after the role-praving-

AsoK MITRA

Two Plays

know what triggers off what chainreactions in the deep rece ses of apoet's mind but the tinal version ofthe first edition as it came out in]922 bore evidence of a udden quan-tum leap in precision and taste andalmost an unaccoUiIltable improve-ment in what Eliot mentioned withreference to Dante and so applicableto his own case: ",,,,e have to con-sider the type of mind which by na-ture and p'ractice tended to expresitself in allegory: and, for a compe-tent- poet, allegory mean clear visual;mal!.cs."

The final passage in The TtVasleLand based on die BrihadaranyakaUpanishad, 5.J-'Datta cUlyadhram,tlamyata' (Give, sympathize, conllrol)came all by itself rounded and im-maculate like a pearl, of which Poundsuggested not one change of word orcomma. Eli had arrived andPound's ta k wa done.

Va. rie Eliot ha hancbomely andfull)' acknowledged thi b' calJino-Ezra Pound "'a ",ondrou nece sal'''man' to my husband".

tradicuon and form part of the de·caying process no . less than theDemon King who .llltempts to stemthe rot by tyranny. While the greatpoets of the past cou"Id face the truthbout the fate of their civilization,

wifu ilts inhuman basis, breathing a~oving despair and a strugg'linghope, the author of Kalillagm'i canonly hides behind comfortable I,iesand produce .1 fake and facile solu-,tion. Man:, on the other hand, hadforeseen the doom as part of thehistory of cla s societies, and lookedto it, in our day, to destroy, once foraU" the very basis of disaster inman's social history and usher in theera of human brotherhood, freedomand equality. He had the true visionof a tragic poet.

KhamOlh. Adalat Jari Uaidakar's Khamosh Ada/at ]al'i Hai

i a Hindi version of Vijay Tendul-kar's Marathi play, a Bengali tran-lation of which was staged in Cal.

cutta by a troupe known for itsmodernist pretensions. Adakar'schoice may 'have been determi·nedby the sophisticated stage.hsitory ofthe play, for the group sets s~ore bycultural sophistication and moderni-nity. Articles in the souvenir throwemphasis on ,the high attainments ofmodern Bengali theatre, which Ada·kar tries respectfully to emulate.But going through Ithe titles of playsin its repertory, which includes

gaotha Christie's thriller, One canhard Iv resist a smile. lndeed, as reogards' modernism in theau'e, thegroup ha got the wrong end oC thetick, like most of the professional

and semi-professional compa,nies inCalcutta. There is lFttle perceptionthat a great deal of ,modern Bengalitheatre is either vile or pretentiou .Its technical virtuosity is a shallowimitattion and no more progressivethan ,the new sartorial barbarism andmale coiffure.

But Vijay Ten~ulkar's play is re-markable in the way it sums up ourcultural bankrupltcy. That a pioneerBengali troupe has included it in itsrepertory, shows that the degenera-,tion has affected the very source of

14

Indian upper.class culture. Thestory is about the undoing of ayoung women by a married professor'r,he victim is no immature school.girl seduced in innocence but aschool teacher aged 30, willingly get-ting off with her would-be ravisheruntil she finds herself with child.By way of self-defence, she reveals withwithering scorn that everybody haslusted after ller lovely flesh since sheburst into youth. But why shouldshe have succumbed to the adulterousdesire of a man unless bel' own fleshwas weak, though Ithe spirit not toowilling perhaps? Indeed it is diffi·cult to believe her air of injuredinnocence.

But ~his r jejune theme is woveninto an elaboratte design of playwithin play, which is labouriouslyunravelled in the course of a rehear·sal. Much ingenuity is expendedon this unravelling game. It is herethat ill-digested ideas from modernEuropean theatre are used as a de.vice to give a modish air to thehackneyed story. !theatrical com.pany is rehearsing a play dealingwith court proceedings which bringto trial an unman-ied mother forattemplting suicide. The actress, whois to play the acoused woman, is the\ ery school-teacher whom the villai.nous professor has got witth child.Her actual identification with therole she plays emel'ges in the COW'seof rehearsal of the mock proceedings,once a 'wkness' give the cue by im-provising his part from a popular

. novel. Then the others add theirreal evidence by way of improvisingtlIeir Hnes. The play takes shape-an 'imaginal'Y' one strangely resem-bling what has aotually happened tothe heroine. The identification icomplete: she cannot play the part;she can only live it.

All this cleverness in the construc-tion of the play, its preoccupationwith Ithe novelties of modern theatrein its externah, are a perfect illus-tration of decadence. A decadentart is marked by divorce from life,lack of genuine inspiration, imita.tiveness and needless elaboration ofform. In Calcutta's theatrical pro.

ductions, tlIis decadence manifestsitself either in vulgarity presentedwith sophistication or sophisticationpresented with vulgarity.

Music Of The MassesBy A MUSIC CRITIC

LAST week Rabindra Sadan be.came the focal point of cultures

from different! countries-a Moldavianfolk music ensemble, a folk troupefrom the German Democra~ic Re-public and a cultw'al group fromBangladesh. The emphasis was onthe folk ingredients of the cul,turaltradit~on of each country, althoughthe Bangladesh programme includedsome • o~her varietie also. Minorlapses apart, the whole,.,show .<atwO-rlay ession for each country). was a'riCn eshti'ng experience. .

The Mold~avljan group, Fluerash,\Va named after tJhe traditional folknn.l,5ical in~rllment IOf the country,the flueI', a kind of pipe mainly play-ed U} the hepherd. Founded in1949, thi group include many musi.cian who are the direct! de'cendantsof the ancient Molda\tian {olk-sinlrersand instrument.pI'ayers, and this ~ex·plains the spontaneity and spirit! of.gay"abandon among the Itroupe, apart of the living heri,tage of theirColk culture. The songs were highlyevocative, speciaHy the lilting <:harmof the folk song "Green Leaf" andthe touch of romantic comedy in thesong "1 would marry the girl, ifonly she were like you". Equall'}' re·markable was the wine·fe&tival songperformed by Tamara Tcheban withfull-blooded gaiety. The folk-orches-U'a was of 2. hi~"liorder <tnd dIe mu-:sicians played na~ only ",lith theirin~ruments but al 0 with all theirbody and mind. The fo~lc-melody"Lullaby" brought out the soft ten-derness of a mother's heart and the"Mol'lling Scenes" and ,the melody ofthe spring unfold ~the beauties of'nature in a series of vivid musicalimages. The da.nce numbers werebeautifully choreographed and marked

DECEMBER 9. 1972

15

Dec. '72 is ue • Price: Rupee One

• '~:oilfrtwt" ~ ,gt~ ..f,1'f11{?(f~r."l'll !!l,,,'ilfn fil79fl~)

• '~lIf~tll\!\~it~ti1 'i~t.( 'l~~ ~'f~ ~~~)

"'ttytfl f~ift1f1l1r,. 'If ~Jt-9f1'1t' ( ~1I~ 1J1'n -91<J~ )

• f9fr~~11l(f~fJf f9f "'ttl (~1f ~ .••)

• ~t\!~ ~~ ~'Jft~'§ ~1§f~~tlf( f9f9f'~1[ C\l.~f"'l JllOPfl'fCl\1 )

--.. 'RtfllTtif llf\s'~ ~~t'StI'ftllt~ ~,,\! II'EOPLE'S BOOK AGENCY

BOfe Netajee Road. P. O. KHAGRADt. Mursbidabad

heMen to death. A report in a localBengali daily, ,jugantar, puts thenumber of tho~e killed in these jaiJaat fifty. But those killed outside atpublic places in broad daylight arcunnumbered.'''Te demand that these heinousatrocities be ~topped' immediately.All prisoner should be brought totrial and only tho'se convicted of

.specific charge punished accordingto law. The others must be releasedwithout delay. On no accountshould any person be confined in-definitely 0):1 suspicion or frame-ups.

We strongly feel that if all whoare confined without trial are n()~

released immediately, we must entellon a democratic struggle .to securetheir release by rousing public cons-cience not only in West 'Bengal orIndia but the outside world as well~

The signatories include: BenoyGhose, Ashok Mitra, VivekanandaMukherjee, 1\1rinal Sen, Hiren Bo~e,Mriganka Sekhar Ray, Nibar 'BinduChaudhuri, Sudhin Thapyal, MihirAcharya. Dilip Chakraborty, TarunChatterjee, Rana Bose, Robi SenGupta, Hiten Ghosh, Biren Chatter-jee, Sova Sen, U.tpal Dutt, AshaMaiu'a, Tapas Sen, Kalpataru Sen-gupta, Samar Sen, Jivanlal Banerjeeand otbers.

Some writers, artists, journalists,stag-e and film directors, actors andactresses and intellectuals of We:;tBengal in a statement to the presssay, in part:

"For more than a year now, thou-ands in W'est Ben~al have been in

pri 011 without trial. The Governmenti violalin~' all freedom of opinion andbasic democratic rights - thoughpo tel'S carrying appeals to eschew vio-lence are i sued by it. 'We cannotbut decry the way thi violation isgoing on. In the jails of West Ben-gal and Madras, prisoners, we learn,are kept i.n chains in dark insanitarycells debarred from all contact witbltheir friends and relations. The fewwho have come out of these places ofconfinement bear witness, with thehorrible state of their mind andbody. to the practice of medieval tor-ture carried no in ide. Prisoners alMiclnapore, Berhampore, Dum Dumand Asansol have been killed bypolice firing and sometimes even

tary regime. Among the patriOltic-=horusos, the ong commemoratiingitihe language movement of TwentyFirst February, knocked right intoour hearts. For it beaut.iful melodyand elevatjn~ content, but the otherwng-s, though well sung, le£t us cold.Two Tagore song, "Pm'ano Sei DinerKat·ha", rendered by Jafhedur Rahimand "Swapana Jadi Bhangiley" sungby Fahmida Khatun, stood out fora sensiti\'e understanding of the moodand nuances of Tag'ore tunes. SheikLutlfur Rahaman ang a kirtan-basedson?; by Tazrul (Ami .Tabana Jaban ••Madhava Bihina Madbabi Kunjey")with enthraHing passion. But tlhemost memora:)le pieces 'Werethe folk-numbers, a marniage song fromSylhet, and ~'wo Bhowaiya songs by

ina Hamid and RathindranathRo\'. which capt.ured the true spiri,tof folk u'adition. The baIlet, ofcour.e, wa~ a poor attempt to por-tray for magnitude of the' fire..ordealin Bangladesh.

FRO ER

A StateIDrnt

DFCF:. IBER 9 197

uy an unerring sense of rhythm. Thepiece entitled "On tthe Way to Kish.niney", shone outl for its beautifulexposition of folk characters with a!touch of uninhibited, numbustious,rural wit. A plea ant surpri e of theprogramme was a boatman's song inBengali presented by the troupe whichcreated an immedialte rapporU be-tween the performer. and the 5U p-porters.

The fo}.k troupe of the GermanDemocratJic Republic was composed.of the musicians from the com:nu-nity of the Sorbs of Slavonic origin,inhabiting the territory bel'ween theElbe and the OdeI'. Since its incep-tion in 1952, this group bas heenworking hard for disseminatingtheir folk culture in different coun·tries. Unlike the Moldavian group.the 'troupe's pedormances weremarked bv fonnaJ~sed dance move·men~s replete with ab tract imageries,a complex mu ical, truct'llre andan overall rigidity of discipline (may-be a touch of the usual Teutonic ri-g-our) , veering more toO cla~';icalmoulds then to improvisation-based folk pal'terns. However, thepro~ramme was h.ighJ.yenjoY;lble andthe technical virt'Uo.ity of thf' mu i-dans. sine;ers and the dancers W;JS

breath,taking. The opening halletnumber "Breac1 and Salt", a kind ofode on human liberation, was fullof heroic overtones; '''St Tohn's

ight" was a humorous evocation ofa spooky mid ummer night when theyoung one' are out for fun; ann"Storv of Stone 'Vorkers' , was abravl~ra piece of symbolic balletwhere stone wa Shown as the per-sonification of human endeavour.The group also pre ented asong' in lndian l.anguage, but it waqa pity that! the song- chosen wa acheap one, from a Raj Kapoor film.and not a real folk-piece as rendererlby the l\folclavians.

The progTamme ·of ,the Ban~la-desh cultural troupe was divided intot'wo ections, a recital of son~ ofrliff'~renl enre<>and "Bangladc6h".a drree-a ballet on the people'sstrll~le a~in the Pakist'ani· mili.

]AYANTA BHOWALCalcutta

DECEMBER 9. 1972

Peking And CPI (ML)I disagreed with the poUtical reo

so1utions. theories and the line ofarmed actions of the CPl (ML) un-der the leadership of Charu Mazum-dar. But criticism is not enough.One hould criticise to cure the sick.patient and learn from the past mis7takes to determine we correct policy.

You have done a great disserviceto the Indian revolution by publish.ing a downright forged documentlunder the !heading "Peking andCP (ML)" in your paper (4-11-72).The "document" ha only multipliedthe confusion already prevailingamong the ,communist revolution-aries belonging to all groups.

We have verified from the proper.ource that Peking did ,never su~gestthe formulations, lines and under-standing as indicated in this so-calleddooume~t, This abo~inable for~er)'is a con piracy to sabotage tILe In.dian revolution. I do not know whorlbe t:onspiratars are. It may ha.vebeen hatched up by naive fickle.minded members of :the CPI (ML)who have been lately condemningCharu Mazumdar without makingany self-o·iticism, or by the nen-re-visionists or even by· the police-CIAOr police-KGB gan?;.

I hope that in future you wouldbe careful and verify the authenti-city of any document before publi-cation.

Confusion is extIJ.'emenow; no moreconfusion plea e.

N. K. SINGHNew Delhi

Attack On PrisoDe~

We severely condemn the incidentof la~hi-charge (on November 26)on the unarmed political prisoners ofBerhampur Special Jail injuringseventy-six of them. According to. "newspapers, the prisoners' demandwas that they, instead of being con-fined' to tlhe cell throughout the day,be allowed to come out at least once.\'Ve think the pri oners' demand wasentirely justified. On the other hand,the policy of confining the prisonerin the cell throughout the day, adop-ted by the jail authority, was inhu-man and ilJel!:al. It follows that theentire responsibility for this incidentquarely lies on the jail ~utlhority.

We demand an immedJ:ate and \im-partial enquiry into the whole affairand also punishment of the personsresponsible for it. In th:s connection,we wanl to remind all lhalt this inci-dent is not the first of its kind. in therecent past. The situation - inside Periyar And Kamarajthe prisons is so horrible that priso-ners are losing their mental balance 1 read with interest the article en-and on that plea cowardly attacks titled 'MGR's Party' (4.11.72) by aare bein~ perpet!Iated upon th~m one correspondent from Tamil Nadu. Heafter another. We demand that secure could not pre-ent an objective assess-cOlJ.ditionswithin the jails be brou2"hl ment of the situation there. His sub-back and a1l political· prisoners gran- jective approach to the whole prob-ted recol!:nition and fac'lities due to lem has made h.lmsee many virtues inthem, At the same time. we appeal Mr Kamaraj. But wa~ nOt Mr Kama-to people irrespective of their ideo- rai himself responsible for an sortslogical affiliations to come forward to of cotruntt~on during the Congressprotest against this sort of shameful rule? The Nadal'S under him flour·incidents. I rished like anything. Furthermore,

Association for the Protectionof Democratic Rightt

leI of a State in a ca e involving itscorrespon.dent. A newspaper editors'body politely asked the POV man totake the matter to the Press Council.The reply of the Press Council wasthat they could not do anything whenthe Government had already takenaction, The Vice-Chancellor ofJawaharlal I ehru University saidthat he held no responsibility as MeI. K. Shuk'a was on deputation. Ano-ther intellectuai, after hearing thestory, cynically remarked, "whatwoul:l you like to have-coffee, beerOr what ?"

16

I

Press Fre~domMr I. K. Shukla, an Assoc:ate Pro-

fessor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-versity, posted at Manipur, wrote inhis covering letter to the editor of aDelhi weekly, Point of View: "Mani-pur is rocked 'with cor~ption :.ndcrime and the ruling party IS adop.mgfascist methods ... Let New Delhiawake. The danger is thick andclosed. Action can't be stalled forthe sake of tin-toy democracy. Itwill startle shock, stir New Delhi intoaction. Ii we achieve this, journa-lism has done its duty."

All the apprehensions of Mr Shuklacame true. His article ("The Time-Bomb called Manipur", Point ofView, September 9, 1972) di-d"startle shock and s~ir New Delhi,"resulting in his arrest on September22. One fine morning (October 6)the magazine's office was searchedand the copies of the journal and theoriginal manuscript of the article wereseizOOJbecause it containe:;ij matter"intended to ,promote feeling of en-mity anj hatred and contempt, andexcite disaffection towards the govern-ment established by law in India,the publication of which is punisha-ble under ~ection 153-A and 124-Aof the Penal Code (45 of 1860)."

The journal, in a subsequent issue,gave a summary of the article topro\'e that the charges were all wrong.

The reaction of national ljailiesand news agencies, which try to lookvery worried over the "threat posedby the. Government to the fr:edom ofthe Press" was very iromcal. Tothe news editor of a news agency theepisode had no news value I Editorsof two national dailies di.d not evencare to know the facts of the case.The reply of one of them was: "Iam busy doing the make-up of the'fifth paae please contact me again."The other editor said that he coulddo precious little about it and askedthe POV man to go to the PressCouncil. Just a few weeks ago the'Same editor had fought a much-pu'o-licized battle against the Chief Minis-

--

he himseU is not above board.Hi reference to 1r E. V. Rama·

swami .aikar show his hia again tthe OK leader, popularly known asPeriyar in Tamil. 'adu. It i true,he is not a .Iani t, nor did he everclaim hiIllielf to be. Bu to denyhim the progr i'e role e played inuplifting tI.e Tami.- i a trave t} offacts. It i tlue he i a fanatic anti,Brahmin. But to call hi mo\ementreligious i' ag.lin a denial of fact .He had been continuo I 1)' anti-reli.giou and an iconoda. His anti-Brabmani m iii his weapon tooppo:.e the influence of religion,Brahmani m happen to be a symbolof re igio i}. In fact, Periyar comesin the tradition of -the ancient Indianmaterialis (Charvaka) who shower-ed abu on the Brahmin priests.

Th majority of the DMK leader.ship is corrupt. Initially, they werein fired by Periyar. Your corres-pondent could not make a distinctionbetween those who were lumpenproletariat and those who were trueproletariat. He ha clubbed them alltogether a "gamblers, burlers, tailors,barbers etc.". If the latlter under theinspiration and guidance of theirperiyar worked to e tablish the sup-remacy of their cultUle, what wawrong with them? As regard thecorrupt among them, people arcbound to rise to throw them off. Forthat plu'pO e, the services of MrKamaraj, the leader of equally c.>r-rupt men, are not required. Yourcorer pondent j Lryin~ to play tricksthrouglh cl1ee column to arousecheap sympathy in tbe mind of thecommunists all 0\ er the country hypublicising- the o-called philan-thropy of Mr Kamaraj in helpingthe ,·ddow of a ,communi t in dis-tre .

KA KHA GANew Delhi

Indian Scientists1 have read Dr arendra ingh's

"Jndian dentist" (Frontier Vol. 5,roo 20. 19i2 with interest, but was

surprbed nO to find an' re~pon e to

DE .E. mER 9, 1972

FRO TIER

it, especially from the Indian scientificcommunity, in the subsequent issuesof the journal. Such lack of res-ponse could mean that (a) Indianscientists do not read Frontie?', aocio-political Journal; (b) they areunable to comprehend the pointsmade by Dr ingh; (c) they chooseto ignore the article or, (d) theycompletely agree with the author.1 ot being able to associate myselfwith any of the e categories, I wouldlike to draw the reader' ·atten1tiontu the following points:

1.. I agree with Dr Singh to theextent that a large number of Indianscientists are unconcern,ed with ,theproblems of the society they belongto; that their aspirations are oftenindividualistic; and that, therefore,they are irrelevant >tothe wider socialcontext. This assessment is right asfar as it goes, but one has to under-take a more incisive analysis of thesituation in order to identify thecomponents of the community res-!Jonsible for its failure and to pin-point the caus~s thereof,

2. The scientists of India l>houlclbe dichotomized into (a) those whohold power--Senior Scientists, andl(b) tho e who do riot-Youn~Scienti 15.

3. The Young scienti ts are notcompletely una,vare of the total socialconte.xt and of their social respoD"i.bility. This is evident from DrSingh's own writing, "The Problemsof Young Scientists" (ScientificWorld, Vol. 15, No.5, 1971) whichsummarize~ the feelings of a group ofyoun~ scienti ts. Also, the fact thata large Dumber of s>tuclents, incllld-in?; science-students, arc recentlytaking- active interest in politics, ofwhatever colour i,t may be, indicatesthe social awareness of tbe scienti,ts·in-the-makin~, assuming that at leastthe majority of these politicaJ1y-inclined students are not motivatedby personal in terests.

4. In how many academic insti-tutions, the authorities, who includesenior scienti ts, have incorporated inthe syllabi courses on the purpose ofscien tific research, in general, andthe socinl function of ~cience. i·n par-

ticular? In ho~ many of them thesenior scientiStts have cared to drawup integrated, !broad £ram~ of re-search prog-ramme, witlh the priori-li s carefully laid out with referenceto -the total social context, into whichindividuals from specific disciplines.could fit in, utilizing their specializedinterests and tr:linirrg? The lack ofa cumprehensive: planning of scien-tific research, of a thorough under .•standing of the wider social context,and consequently, of an urge to im-part such understanding to theiryounger colleagues, are deficienciesof the seniors for which they aloneshould be blamed.

5. In how many academic institu-tions, the young scientists are en-couraged to pursue original lines ofresearch in an atmosphere of peaceand freedom? Talki·ng about en-couragement, how many seniors reallycare -to sit with their younger collea•.gues, disCllss tlheir problems and tryto provide the guidance that theymight need'? The 5eniars lieem tobe more interested in running aroundthe country, or the world, dependingon their academic eminence and/orrelative posit.ion in academic rackets,delivering stale lectures in s>terileseminars, symposia, and what haveyou, than devoting their time andenergy to promoting academics intheir own institutions. Further, theseniors seem to be more interes>ted inmaintaining weir hegemony overthese institutions, rather than ensur-ing maximally efficient performancein a congenial atmosphel ~ by incor-porating the views of ail sciewistsconcerned in policy_decisions. Astriking example of this zamindar-like attitude of ,the senior scientists isprovided by a re earch-cum-teachinginstitution of national importance.Recently, while the authority wasconsidering adopting an appropriateorganisational snucture, all cientificworkers of the institution, unani.mously recommended a democraticlttructure, the main feature of whichwas involvement of the workers, and/or their representa-tives, at differentlevels of decision-making. These un-animous recommendation were re-

17

S. M. NASEARMontreal, Canada DECEMBER 9, 1972

RANAJIT SEl. Calcutta

I t is said that Mrinal Sen's CalcutUi71 has the "guts to look reality inuhe face .. ." and this reality is "themost real element in the Indian rea-litY--'lpoverty.. ." (Fronti~r, Octlo-Del' 14. ). Poverty is a settloo factof human history and as such themost . traditional, simple, commonplace and inoffensive target againstwh:ch attacks are often directed. Re-action to p'?verty has, therefore, nomeaning because it diverts the focusfrom exploitation-the real motiveforce of history-to its effects.Hence the invariable bourgeois teoh-nique of mass diversion is the cam-paign against poverty. Take for ex-ample Mrs Gandhi's slogan of'Garibi Hatao". Does it differ very

much from Mr Sen's campaign? Byhis failure Mr Sen has proved that thefilm medium has not yet reache<J thestage where it can be an instrument ofpeople's war.

Calcutta 71

Mrinal Sen mLlst, therefore, go onmaking (ilms in Ius own style, nomatter whether othey acquire "propa-gancUst overtones" or not. The ageoldOl.cept that a "film i a film" has to

be broken. The basic Indian realit\.-poverty-ha to be focussed ill ;eli passionate way and in the procesmas consciou ne. s will have tobe aroused. For how long the pooranel exploited Indians will continueto be victims of the silent propa~an-da of the petit-bourgeois cinema?

DEBABRATA GHOSHaihati

Illte..t'View and Calcutta 71 have insuccf'ssiol1 hrought against MrinalSen the charges from elf-stydedae thetes that he is using films as amedium of propaganda. But this ino unn;nural phenomenon, no dis-llll"bing factor either: in a semi-fe·udal ana .emi-bourgeois countrythe confusion regarding the correctline of demarcation between aro(andpropaganda always persi t .

'Politics and. Fanatsy' dismissed Mau-lana Bhashani's allegations of sys-tematic Indian economic expansion inEast Bengal as the work ot his fee-J>le mind. This is not a now tacticemployed. by Indian reactionaries.Twenty-two years age Hindu imperia-lists hailed Sheikb Abdullah of Kash-mir as a, great democrat wbile hedanced to the tune of Nehru andPatel. The san:e Sheikh AbduLaIhwas thrown into an Indian jail in1953 when he resisted the banyas

from Delhi and Punjai:> who wantedKR~tlInir to become their huntingground. In later years he was bran-ded COIlllUunalist, traitor and whatnot. His party and colleagues todaystand condemnedJ because they wantIndia t{) honour h~r pledge to holda referendum.

One generation later the sameIndian imperialists went into a sove-reign state to liberale tbe people

from Pakistani ru:e. Now 'history seems({)be repeating itself wj~h slight modi-fication. While Sheikh Mujib isanxious to cling on to power regard··1e3~ of what happens to Beng:~listhere, the Maulana has shown the cou-rage to point out the Dew ecoDomicexploitation that is going on with thetacit approval of Soviet imperialist5.It is a great tribute to the popularityof Maulana Bhashani that he ha'S notaeen rOUll-::Ledup by Mujib s squadsso far. Your corrcspon-dmt naivelysuggests that the Maulana should con-solidate the progressive forces in EastBengaL He is prdhably unaware ofthe massive clean-up of all oppositionto Mujib's reactionary clique withactive Indian military might undertbe cover of purging the country ofcollaborators of former regimes. Thesuggestion that Maulaua Bhashanishould accept Indian lecon,bmicaggres'sion in Bangladesh in returnfor the refuge he h:1d in India -duringthe . Pakistani Army crackdown isridiculous. India, accoding to herleader, went to war with Pakistan tlOsave democracy in Bangladesh. Sowhy shauB she eX'Pect total submis-sion from E~st Bengal leaders besid:sSheikh Mujib, who has s'hown howgood he is at that ?

18

Bhashani

I am not sur,prised to see the endof tbe .holl'~ymoon 'oetween the 80-called Bangladesh and Indian impe-imlists. Your correspondent (Sep-tember 9, 1972) under the caption

J«ted by the highe~t policy-makingbody of the in!ltitution, which in-c1ude5 manv senior scientists, withthe active ~o-opeTation of some ofthese seniors.

6. Given the virtual lack of ade-qu~te planning and efficient man~e-ment of scientific Tese~rch, the avail-able research grants are often largelywasted. This may happen in variousways: (a) most o[ the funds conso-lidate at the hand of a limited num-ber of senior scientists, who them-selves occupy important positions invarious committ.ees of the fund-givingorganizations and whose acadc.mic.commitment and competence mIghtbe questionable, and :xpend~~ onthe basis of their subjectIve deci LOns;(b) often the emphasis is on spend-ing the grant vrithin the tipulateclperiod, than on genuine aCadel?icpursuit, which involves productlonof a stereotyped report and/or ex-ploit3'tion of the young. scientists'labour; and (c) completion of re-search project and production o{ areport, of whatever worth it may ~e,,vii.thin a stipulated 'period, and !lotreturn of a handsome grant.. m1ghtreduce science to the level of a com-moditv and scientists to that of amerch~nt community, in contradis.tinction to the much more preferablerole of scienc~ a an effective toolfor promoting social progress.

7. Summing up, Dr Singh' accU-ations against ,the Inclian cienti~t

are laro-ely valid; but the fault hemore ,~ith the senior cientist thanwith the young ones, who might nothave lo~t all good se-nse a·ttogether.already ; and, the; ineVitable que-lion is, what should one do to putIndIan science on the right lrack-pray to God or raise hell ?

A Yo G ClENTlFlC WORK1'.ltCalcutta

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