हमारे विश्वविद्यालय एक आँखें खोलने वाला उपन्यास है, जिसमें एक नव स्थापित केंद्रीय विश्वविद्यालय के प्रथम कुलपति रहे अभय मौर्य ने हमारी शिक्षा व्यवस्था में आ चुकी तथा और भी पतन की ओर जा रही स्थिति का यथार्थ बयान किया है। इसमें हाल के वर्षों में जे एन यू व हैदराबाद के छात्रों पर हुए भयंकर दमन और अकादमिक स्वतंत्रता पर हो रहे आघातों का भी सटीक चित्रण हुआ है और अगर कोई ईमानदार और आदर्शवादी कुलपति छात्रों, अध्यापकों व कर्मचारियों के हितों का ध्यान रखते हुए उन्हें बेहतर काम के लिए प्रेरित करें तो उसके रास्ते में कैसी बाधाएँ आती हैं, किस प्रकार उसे राजनीतिक दबावों का सामना करना पड़ता है, यहाँ तक कि कुछ दक्षिण पंथी धार्मिक संगठन उसकी जान के भी शत्रु हो जाते हैं, को स्पष्टता से उसकी पूरी क्रूरता के साथ वर्णित किया है। लेकिन इस भयावह समय में समाज के भीतर ही प्रतिरोधी शक्तियाँ भी हैं, जो भले ही संख्या बल में कम हों, परंतु उनमें नैतिक बल और साहस अधिक है। दक्षिण पंथी उग्र धार्मिकता के दमनकारी दौर में किस प्रकार भगत सिंह और डॉ अंबेडकर के विचार इस उग्र व फाँसी हिंसक हमले के प्रतिरोध के लिए युवा विद्यार्थी वर्ग की प्रेरणा व ताकत बनते हैं और व्यवस्था के भीतर से ही कुछ मानवीय अधिकारी इन युवायों की ढाल बनते हैं, इसका आशावादी चित्रण भी हुआ है। कुलपति इन तमाम दबावों का हिम्मत से सामना करते हैं, अपने सौम्य व सहयोगी स्वभाव से संस्थान के विद्यार्थियों, अध्यापकों व कर्मचारियों का समर्थन हासिल करते हैं, और इन दमनकारी शक्तियों के सामने न झुक कर, सम्मान के साथ अपना कार्यकाल समाप्त करते हैं। उपन्यासकार निराशा के इस दौर में भी उम्मीद का दामन नहीं छोड़ते और कई पतित हो चुके पात्रों के हृदय परिवर्तन के कुछ अतिरिक्त आदर्शवाद और आशावाद से साहिर लुधियानवी के गीत से उपन्यास समाप्त करते है-वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी…
Alvida Manohar-My friend
Obituary-Prof. Manohar Lal
Chaman Lal*
At the tender age of seven years, a child born in a comfortably living middle-class family went through the trauma of the partition, yet going through the deprivations and struggles, not only reset the life to a comfortable zone, being elder, helped four younger siblings also to acquire a respectable place in society.
Manohar Lal born to the family house of Charan Das, who has a shop in Mandi Kanganwal in Kasur tehsil (now district) on the other side of the border. During partition riots, many Hindu and Sikh families were massacred (as in East Punjab Muslim families were massacred), but an army unit saved lot many families and under their protection took many families first to Kasur town and later to Ferozepur on Train. The many families sought shelter in a recently vacated huge haveli of a Muslim family, who had migrated to Pakistan and the struggle to reset the life began. It first took the Charan Das family to Saharanpur for few months, but could not find a liveable work, so searching places, landed in Rampura village close to Mandi Rampura Phul in Bathinda district. Here some earnings led to the first schooling of the eldest child Manohar Lal, followed by other younger siblings. Manohar Lal and Yashpal were born in West Punjab other three siblings were born and brought up in East Punjab. Manohar Lal worked with his father on a shop while studying in school, took care of the studies of younger siblings and after Matriculation found a teaching job at Panchayat school. Later he did a course of Sanitary Inspector and worked briefly at Gurgaon as a sanitary inspector, vaccinating hundreds of small children, who used to run away out of fear of injections. In between their father Charan Das had a paralytic stroke, which made him immobile and bedridden for the rest of his life. Though a good Samaritan Govt. hospital Doctor Sharda Ranjan, to whom this author also knew as a most respected doctor of the area in those days, went to their home in Rampura village without charging any fees to treat, but it was too late. The responsibility of running he shop was now on the shoulders of Mrs Lajwanti and young children. Later when younger brother Yashpal after completing Science teacher training, got the job in a school, the elder one completed his MA in English from DAV College Dehradun in 1967 and MPhil from Punjabi University Patiala. After running Your Academy a private coaching centre at Rampura Phul with another friend Megh Raj, for a few years, found his favourite job as a Lecturer in English at Public College Samana in 1976, from where he retired in year 2000. He got his life partner, a High school Hindi teacher Nirmala Devi in 1971, marrying her in the simplest possible manner, with minimum rituals and without any dowry or exchange of gifts. Both of them got two children son and a daughter, now holding a good position, son Advocate K D Sachdeva being a former additional advocate general of Punjab.
But it was after retirement, Prof. Manohar Lal found more satisfaction, when he started translating literary texts, some of them classics. Thus, for Punjabi University Patiala, Prof Manohar Lal translated Bertrand Russel large large-sized Autobiography and Albert Camus’s famous philosophical treatise The Rebel in Punjabi. He also translated Will Durant’s The Greatest Minds and ideas of the time in Punjabi. Two books of Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine system in Punjabi. Manohar Lal translated Sahit Academy and Kuvempu award winner fiction writer Gurbachan Singh Bhullar’s only novel Eh Janam Tumhare Lekhe(This Life Dedicated to You) in English. He also translated selected stories of Kartar Singh Duggal and Santokh Singh Dhir in English, assigned by the National Book Trust of India (NBT), New Delhi. Duggal’s stories were published by NBT, a few years ago. Some of the other translated works are awaiting publications. Apart from these books, Manohar Lal also translated present Punjab minister Anmol Rattan Maan’s writings in English, Gandharv Sen Kochhar’s autobiography and Mehram editor from Nabha. late B S Bir’s stories in English
Prof. Manohar Lal had an attack of Colin Cancer in 1996 and had open heart surgery in 2007, yet he never lost his heart. With his disciplined lifestyle and frugal meals, he continued to perform all the duties of a family head. On 15th August 2022, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of independence, his younger journalist brother Baljit Balli interviewed him on his web portal Babushahi.com, from which we could know about his struggles in life and the impact of partition on common citizens of both countries!
In January 2023, he had another stroke, though recovered, but this attack was quite severe, his voice became affected though his mind remained fully alert, reading papers, watching tv and taking a walk was part of his routine. He had become very weak and lost weight a lot, his haemoglobin was very low, not feeling hungry, so could not eat much to gain weight. In the early morning of 27th April, he passed away in sleep peacefully @83+. A condolence meeting was held in Prof. Manohar Lal’s memory on 4th May, Saturday at Chandigarh.
*Prof. Chaman Lal is a retired Professor from JNU, New Delhi and a close friend and brother-in-law of Prof. Manohar Lal. He can be contacted on X(Twitter) as ProfChaman
कृष्णा सोबती को याद करते हुए
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कृष्णा सोबती को याद करते हुए
चमन लाल*
कृष्णा सोबती से मेरी पहली मुलाकात कब हुई या कब मैंने उन्हें पहली बार देखा सुना , ठीक से याद नहीीं पड़ता। 1977 में जब मैं शोध छात्र रूप में जे.एन॰यू पहुींचा उसके बाद ही उन्हें देखा सुना होगा। अस्पष्ट रूप से ध्यान आ रहा है कि जब वे ददल्ली ववश्वववद्यालय के नजदीक रहती थीीं और उन ददनों समाजशास्त्री वीणा जी ददल्ली ववश्वववद्यालय में ही अध्यापन कर रही थीीं, तो प्रोफेसर हरजीत ससींह गगल के साथ वीणा जी या कृष्णा सोबती के यहााँ ककसी व्यक्ततगत पाटी में जाना हुआ था और शायद पहली बार उन्हें वहीीं देखा था। प्रो. गगल तब पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय पदटयाला में ही थे, बाद में वे 1984 में ठीक 31 अततूबर के ददन दींगाइयो से बच कर जे एन यू जॉइन करने पहुींचे थे। 1977-82 के जे एन यू के छात्र ददनों में शायद समत्रो मरजानी का नाट्य रूपाींतर देखा था।
1985 में मैंने पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय पदटयाला के दहन्दी ववभाग में अध्यापन आरींभ ककया तो वहााँ पर कृष्णा सोबती की बदहन सुषमा अबबी भी पढ़ा रहीीं थीीं और उनके पतत प्रोफेसर बी. एल. अबबी भी। प्रोफेसर बबहारी लाल अबबी के साथ प्रोफेसर हरजीत गगल की दोस्ती थी। कृष्णा जी पदटयाला में आती जाती रहती थीीं व मेरे वहााँ जाने से पहले दो साल तक वहााँ फ़ैलो भी रह चुकी थीीं। सुषमा जी और मेरा ववभाग एक ही इमारत में था और उनसे अतसर बातचीत होती रहती थी। आज प्रोफेसर सुषमा और बबहारी लाल अबबी दोनों ही इस सींसार में नहीीं हैं। दोनों कृष्ण जी से पहले ही रुखसत हो गए थे और उनकी बेटी कुमूल पींजाब ववश्वववद्यालय में समाजशास्त्र ववभाग में प्रोफेसर हैं। पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय में मेरी तनयुक्तत के पहले ही साल 1985 या 1986 के शुरू में उपेंद्र नाथ अश्क वहााँ भाषा ववभाग पदटयाला के तनमन्त्रण पर आए। उनके साथ उनके बेटे नीलाभ भी थे। अश्क पररवार के कृष्णा सोबती पररवार से अच्छे ताल्लुकात थे सो वे शहर में न रुक कर पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय के अततगथ गृह में रुके।
1988 में 23 माचच के ददन, जो भगत ससींह का शहादत ददन है, क्ाींततकारी पींजाबी कवव पाश की खासलस्तानी तत्वों ने हत्या कर दी तो मैंने बहुत जल्द उनकी चुतनन्दा कववतायों के अनुवाद का एक सींकलन तैयार ककया, क्जसे राजकमल प्रकाशन ने बीच का रास्ता नहीीं होता शीषचक से पाश की हत्या की पहली बरसी पर ददल्ली में 25 माचच 1989 को एक भव्य कायचक्म में ररलीज़ ककया। पुस्तक ररलीज़ की रस्म पींजाब के प्रससद्ध
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कमुतनस्ट नेता कामरेड सत्या पाल डाींग ने की। पाश पररवार की ओर से पाश के बड़े भाई ओींकार ससींह मेरे साथ उस कायचक्म में पींजाब से गए। मींच पर सब के साथ राजकमल की तब की मासलक शीला सींधु, नामवर ससींह केदारनाथ ससींह और मेरे साथ ओींकार ससींह बैठे थे , जबकक बत्रवेणी सभागार में दहींदी का हर जाना पहचाना लेखक मौजूद था क्जनमें से कई आज हमारे बीच मौजूद नहीीं हैं, जैसे भीष्म साहनी और कृष्णा सोबती। तब शीला सींधु के आग्रह पर कृष्णा सोबती और केदारनाथ ससींह ने पाश की कुछ कववतायों का वहााँ पाठ भी ककया। इसके बाद तो कृष्णा जी से कभी कभार फोन पर बात हो जाती। 1995-97 के आस पास भीष्म साहनी और कृष्णा सोबती दोनों कुछ वषों के सलए सशमला के भारतीय उच्च अध्ययन सींस्थान में फ़ैलो रहे। वहााँ पर मेरा भी जाना रहता था। इस बीच उत्तर भारत साींस्कृततक केंद्र पदटयाला के तनदेशक ने मुझसे कुछ सादहक्त्यक कायचक्म करवाने का अनुरोध ककया। तब 1995 में मैंने तीन दहन्दी लेखकों-भीष्म साहनी, कृष्णा सोबती और जगदीश चींद्र के तीन अलग अलग शहरों में रूबरू कायचक्म करवाए। कृष्णा जी का एक कायचक्म मैंने पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय पदटयाला में भी रखा , यहााँ तब पींजाबी की प्रससद्ध उपन्यासकार दलीप कौर दटवाना भी सकक्य थीीं, क्जनका इसी वषच के शुरू में तनधन हुया, वे उस कायचक्म में मौजूद रहीीं। 1997 में भारतीय उच्च अध्ययन सींस्थान सशमला में मृणाल मीरी तनदेशक थे और कृष्णा जी राष्रीय फैलो। उस वषच दसलत और अश्वेत सादहत्य पर चार ददन की राष्रीय सींगोष्ठी मैंने और हरीश नारींग ने समल कर आयोक्जत की, क्जसका उद्घाटन 14 अततूबर को डा. अींबेडकर के बौद्ध धमच ग्रहण करने के ददन हुया था ,उस में कृष्णा सोबती मौजूद रहीीं।
पींजाबी ववश्वववद्यालय के दहींदी ववभाग में रहते हुए मैंने अगधकाींश शोध पींजाब से जुड़े दहींदी कथाकारों पर तनदेसशत की, क्जनमें एम॰कफल॰ का एक लघु शोध प्रबींध कृष्णा सोबती के उपन्यासों पर भी था। ये ससलससला जे॰एन॰यू में भी जारी रहा , जहाीं मैं दहींदी अनुवाद का प्रोफेसर होकर 2005 में पहुाँचा और एक पी.एच॰डी का शोध प्रबींध कृष्णा सोबती के उपन्यासों के अनुवाद के ववश्लेषण पर तनदेसशत ककया। मेरी वही छात्रा सुनीता कृष्णा जी से अींत तक जुड़ी रही। जे. एन.यू में सववचस के करीब आठ वषच में कृष्णा सोबती से फोन पर अतसर बात होती या सादहक्त्यक कायचक्मों में मुलाकात के वक़्त पर। उनके जीवन साथी सशवनाथ जी सादहत्य अकादमी की एक अनुवाद कायचशाला में साथ रहे , जहाीं ऐ लड़की के सशवनाथ के अींग्रेज़ी अनुवाद पर लींबी चचाच हुई। राष्रीय ड्रामा स्कूल नई ददल्ली द्वारा ऐ लड़की के नाट्य रूपान्तरण का मींचन अत्यींत प्रभावी था।
2013 में जे. एन.यू से सेवा तनवृतत के बाद ददल्ली छोडने से पहले कृष्णा सोबती के मयूर ववहार आवास में अपनी छात्रा सुनीता के साथ मैं गया, जो वहााँ तनयसमत रूप से जाती रहती थी। सशवनाथ जी तब गींभीर रूप से बीमार थे। कफर भी लेटे लेटे ही उन्होंने ना ससफच
3
पहचाना, बक्ल्क गमचजोशी से हाथ दबाया, वे तब बोल सकने की क्स्थतत में नहीीं थे। उसके कुछ समय बाद सशवनाथ जी चल बसे थे। नरेंद्र दाभोलकर, गोववींद पनसारे ,डा.कल्बुगी व बाद में गौरी लींकेश की हत्या के बाद 2015 में व जे.एन॰यू पर 2016 के शुरू में केंद्रीय सरकार के हमले के बाद कृष्णा सोबती ने सादहत्य अकादमी की अपनी महत्तर सदस्यता ही नहीीं छोड़ी, असहनशीलता के माहौल के खखलाफ सलखा भी खूब और ववरोध सभाओीं में अपनी बढ़ी उम्र व खराब सेहत के बावजूद दहस्सा सलया। उन्हीीं ददनों ददल्ली के मावलींकर हाल में एक खचाखच भरे हाल में न ससफच उन्हें सुना, सभा के बाद उनसे मुलाकात भी की। खुद मैंने अपने दो राष्रीय पुरस्कार इस असदहष्णु माहौल के ववरोध में अन्य लेखकों के साथ लौटा ददये थे।
माचच 2018 में आज़ादी सींग्राम और ववशेषतः: क्ाींततकारी आींदोलन की अपनी सारी ककताबों व अन्य शोध सामग्री को भेंट कर ददल्ली असभलेखागार के प्राींगण में भगत ससींह असभलेखगार व सींसाधन केंद्र की स्थापना के बाद, जहाीं मुझे मानद सलाहकार बनाया गया है, मेरा हर महीने का पहला सप्ताह ददल्ली में बबताने का तनयसमत क्म बन गया था। ददसींबर 2018 में सफदरजींग ववकास क्षेत्र (SDA colony) के एक प्राइवेट अस्पताल में उनके दाखखल होने की सूचना समली तो मैं उनसे समलने गया। कुछ समय हम बातें करते रहे और मैं उनके शतायु होने की कामना व कई और शाहकार रचनाएीं सलखने की आशा की भावनाओीं को असभव्यतत करता रहा। लेककन जनवरी 2019 में इस अस्पताल से उनकी आखखरी ववदाई की खबर मुझे अपनी छात्रा सुनीता से समली।
कृष्णा जी भगत ससींह की बहुत प्रशींसक थी, इस ववषय को लेकर भी उनसे बात होती रहती थी। क्जींदगीनामा उपन्यास के दूसरे भाग का नाम ही उन्होने इींकलाब क्जींदाबाद रखा था, क्जसको वे शायद पूरा कर ही नहीीं पाईं। पूरा कर पातीीं तो उसमें भगत ससींह का सींदभच ज़रूर आता। कृष्णा सोबती ने एक भरपूर जीवन क्जया-रचनात्मक स्तर और जीने के स्तर -दोनों ही स्तरों पर । इींसान के जाने का दुख ज़रूर होता है, लेककन एक ददन तो सब को जाना ही होता है। कृष्णा जी क्जस धज से क्जयी और क्जस धज से अलववदा हुईं, वह जशन मनाने लायक है, इससलए अब उनकी रचनायों के जररये उनका जशन मनाना ही उन्हें सबसे अच्छी श्रद्धाींजसल है।
जे एन यू में दाखिले का पहाड़
जे एन यू में दाखिले का पहाड़
चमन लाल*
पंजाब विश्वविद्यालय से एम ए (हिन्दी) करने के बाद वहीं मैंने रमेश कुंतल मेघ के निदेशन मुक्तिबोध के साहित्य पर पी एच डी के लिए पंजीकृत करवा लिया था, लेकिन छात्रवृति के अभाव में दिक्कतें आ रही थीं। मैं स्कूल में हिन्दी अध्यापक के रूप में सरकारी नौकरी में था और अध्यापक संगठन में सक्रिय भी था। पी एच डी का काम ठीक से नहीं चल पा रहा था तो मैंने पंजाबी में प्राइवेट छात्र के रूप में एक एम ए और कर लिया। इस बीच जे एन यू की चर्चा बौद्धिक क्षेत्रों में काफी होने लगी। चंडीगढ़ से मेरे सह छात्र रहे प्रीतम सिंह और भगवान जोश जे एन यू में दाखिल हो चुके थे। भगवान जोश तो विज्ञान विषय मे एम एस सी करने के बाद भी विज्ञान को छोड़ कर जे एन यू में आधुनिक इतिहास विषय में आ गए थे। मुझे भी जे एन यू आने की छटपटाहट थी। 1975 में जे एन यू से हिन्दी में पी एच डी के दाखिले का विज्ञापन निकला और मैंने तुरत फार्म भर कर भेज दिया। लेकिन 26 जून को आपात कल लग गया और जुलाई में जब इंटरव्यू के लिए जे एन यू से टेलीग्राम मिला तो मैं जेल में था। पिता जी ने अदालत में जमानत की गुहार लगाई पर उसमें सफलता न मिली। 1976 में दाखिले के वक़्त तक मैं जेल से बाहर आ चुका था और बाकायदा इंटरव्यू में पहुंचा। तब तक जे एन यू का एम ए हिन्दी का पहला बैच पास आउट कर चुका था और उस बैच के कई छात्र भी इंटरव्यू में आए। 1976 की प्रवेश सूची में मेरा नाम आ गया। लेकिन इस बार भी वक़्त ने सितम किया। जे एन यू में दाखिल होने वाले छात्रों की पुलिस रिपोर्ट मांगी गयी, तो सूची से मेरा और विजय शंकर चौधरी, जो जे एन यू के पहिले बैच के छात्र थे , दोनों का दाखिला खारिज कर दिया गया। इससे पहिले 1975 में भी प्रसिद्ध पत्रकार मोहन राम का दाखिला S I S से खारिज किया जा चुका था। हाल के बरसों में मैंने सुना कि इतिहास केंद्र में भी दाखिले के लिए चुने गए कुछ छात्रों के खिलाफ पुलिस रिपोर्ट होने से उनका दाखिला रोकने की कोशिश की गई थी लेकिन केंद्र के अध्यापकों ने इस मामले पर छात्रों के पक्ष में सख्त स्टैंड लिया और उनका दाखिला रद्द नहीं होने दिया। खैर इस साल 76-77 का इस्तेमाल मैंने एम ए में अपने अंक और दर्जा सुधारने के रूप में किया और 1977 में प्रथम श्रेणी में एम ए की संशोधित डिग्री हासिल कर ली। मार्च 1977 में आपात कल की समाप्ति पर मुझे और विजय शंकर को दाखिले का आफ़र मिल गया और विजय ने उसी समय दाखिला ले भी लिया। लेकिन 1977 से एम फिल शुरू होने वाली थी, जबकि 1975 और 1976 में प्री पी एच डी का कोरस करने के बाद सीधे पी एच डी में दाखिला होता था। अपने होने वाले अध्यापक, प्रोफेसर मैनेजर पाण्डेय के सुझाव पर मैंने 1977 के दाखिले तक इंतज़ार करना बेहतर समझा चूंकि सब को लगता था कि मेरे दाखिले में कोई दिक्कत आने वाली नहीं है। हुआ भी वही और आखिर 1977 में जे एन यू के भारतीय भाषा केंद्र में हिन्दी में एम फिल/पी एच डी का छात्र मैं बन ही गया!
जे एन यू का छात्र बनते ही यही की ज़िंदगी में मैं ऐसे घुल मिल गया जैसे शुरू से यहाँ का ही छात्र रहा होवुं। न सिर्फ अपने केंद्र के छात्रों व अध्यापकों से बल्कि पूरे स्कूल और अन्य स्कूलों के छात्रों व अध्यापकों से एक दोस्ताना रिश्ता बन गया था। यहाँ के अध्यापकों से डर न लग कर उनको शाम के समय गीता बूक शॉप की भीड़ में दूसरे अध्यापकों और छात्रों के साथ घुल मिल कर बातें करते देखना अच्छा लगता था। और जे एन यू का केम्पस इतना खूबसूरत था के घूमने से मन ही नहीं भरता था। रात के दो बजे तक गंगा ढाभा खुला रहता था और उसके बंद होने पर मेरे दोस्त चाय की तलब होने पर पेरियार में मेरे कमरे में आ धमकते थे , क्योंकि मैं कमरे में चाय का इंतजाम रखता था। और फिर जो कविता पाठ शुरू होता तो सुबह होने का पता ही नहीं चलता। मनमोहन, शुभा , पंकज सिंह अपनी कवितायें सुनाते और मुझ से पंजाबी कवियों-पाश, पात्तर, लाल सिंह दिल आदि की कवितायें सुनते। और सुबह होते होते हम लोग चाय की तलाश में निकल पड़ते। देखते ही देखते पाँच साल कैसे गुज़र गए, पता ही नहीं चला। इस बीच सैंकड़ों सभाओं, प्रदर्शनों, सेमीनारों में, जे एन यू और जे एन यू के बाहर जाकर हिस्सा लिया। नेहरू मेमोरियल म्यूज़ियम अँड लाइब्ररी या तीनमूर्ति , जे एन यू वालों की सबसे पसंदीदा जगह थी। हिन्दी के शोध छात्र साहित्य अकादमी और पुरानी दिल्ली के मारवाड़ी पुस्तकालय जाते रहते थे।
1982 में पी एच डी के बाद जे एन यू छात्र के रूप में तो छोड़ दिया और नौकरी पर चले गए लेकिन जे एन यू से नाता नहीं टूटा। कभी छूटियों में किसी दोस्त के यहाँ हॉस्टल में डेरा लगा ही रहता। कभी किसी सेमिनार के लिए निमन्त्र्ण आ जाता। 1985 से 2005 तक पंजाबी यूनिवर्सिटी पटियाला और गुरु नानक देव यूनिवर्सिटी अमृतसर के बाद 2005 में फिर जे एन यू में अध्यापक के रूप में शामिल होकर 2012 के अंत तक कैम्पस में फिर निवास रहा। इस बार एक ओर अध्यापक संगठन में सक्रियता रही और जे एन यू अध्यापक संघ के अध्यक्ष रूप में दायित्व निभाया तो भारतीय भाषा केंद्र के अध्यक्ष की ज़िम्मेदारी भी निभाई। जे एन यू अपने उसी दोस्ताना रूप में मौजूद था, लेकिन पहले से थोड़ा फर्क पड गया था। अब छात्र सभाएं सुबह तीन तीन बजे तक चलने की बजाय बारह बजने तक खत्म हो जाया करती थीं। हमारे छात्र दिनों में प्रकाश करत और जायरस बानाजी की पूरी पूरी रात चलने वाली बहसें अब इतनी लंबी न रही थीं। लेकिन जे एन यू थोड़े समय 1984 के व्यवधान के बाद वैसा ही दोस्ताना बना हुआ था। छोटे मोटे झगड़े विवाद चलते ही रहते थे, लेकिन सामान्यता छात्रों और अध्यापकों के लिए अभी भी अकादमिक रूप से जे एन यू आदर्श बना हुआ था। लेकिन 2016 के बाद वह आदर्श टूट गया या उसे ज़ोर ज़बरदस्ती तोड़ डाला गया। जे एन यू फिर अपने दोस्ताना और अकादमिक भव्यता के साथ उठ खड़ा हो, बस इसे देखने की तमन्ना बाकी है।
*लेखक 1977-82 में भारतीय भाषा केंद्र के शोध छात्र और 2005 से 2012 तक इस केंद्र के प्रोफेसर और अध्यक्ष रहे हैं। वे 2007 में JNUTA के भी अध्यक्ष रहे हैं। हिन्दी आलोचना में कई किताबों के साथ भगत सिंह पर शोधकर्ता के रूप मे उनका नाम जुड़ा हुआ है।
कृष्णा सोबती और उनका पहिला और आखिरी शाहकार उपन्यास – चन्ना
कृष्णा सोबती और उनका पहिला और आखिरी शाहकार उपन्यास – चन्ना
चमन लाल*
चन्ना का प्रकाशन कृष्णा सोबती के 2019 के शुरू में ही दुनिया से विदाई से बस कुछ ही दिन पहले हुया, सो इस अर्थ में यह उनके जीवन काल में छपने वाली आखिरी रचना है, जो उनकी अन्य प्रमुख रचनाओं की तरह ही उपन्यास है। लेकिन इस उपन्यास की संक्षिप्त भूमिका में कृष्णा सोबती पहली ही पंक्ति में कहती हैं-‘मेरा ये पहला उपन्यास विभाजन के बाद लिखा गया।‘ अढ़ाई प्रष्ठ की इस संक्षिप्त भूमिका की आखिरी पंक्तियाँ हैं-चन्ना की ये देर आयद प्रस्तुति कितनी दुरुस्त है, ये पाठक तय करेंगे; मुझे न बहुत प्रसन्नता है न असहमति, बस प्रकाशक के कहने पर ये ज़रूर लगता है कि पाठक मेरी पहली कृति से भी रूबरू हैं, जिसका उस समय अप्रकाशित रहना जिंदगीनामा के प्रकाशन का भी कारण बना। ‘
18 फरवरी 1925 को अविभाजित पंजाब के गुजरात ज़िले में जन्मी कृष्णा सोबती ने एक भरपूर ज़िंदगी के 93 वर्ष पूरे करके 25 जनवरी 2019 को दिल्ली में आखिरी सांस ली। देहांत से बस कुछ ही दिन पहले प्रकाशक ने अस्पताल में उनके हाथ में,जहां वे दाखिल थीं, चन्ना की छपी हुई प्रति भेंट की थी।
कृष्णा सोबती की शिक्षा दीक्षा कई शहरों में हुई, चूंकि उनके पिता नौकरी के सिलसिले में कई शहरों में रहे। शिमला और दिल्ली में उनकी अगर प्रारम्भिक शिक्षा हुई तो लाहौर के फतेहचंद महिला कालेज से वे स्नातक कोर्स कर रही थीं कि विभाजन के कारण वे परिवार सहित दिल्ली आ गईं। दिल्ली आने के तुरत बाद उन्होंने हिंदुस्तान के गुजरात प्रांत की एक रियासत सिरोही के बाल महाराजा तेज सिंह की अभिभाविका (गवर्नेस) रूप में दो साल नौकरी की। इसी अनुभव पर उन्होंने जीवन के अंतिम वर्षों यानी 2017 में आत्म कथात्मक उपन्यास गुजरात पाकिस्तान से गुजरात हिंदुस्तान की रचना की।
कृष्णा सोबती का लेखन कवि रूप में शुरू हुया, यद्यपि उनकी कवितायें मिलती नहीं। लेकिन काव्यात्मकता उनके लेखन का अभिन्न अंग है, जिसकी झलक उनकी गद्य रचनाओं और विशेषतः शब्दों के आलोक में खूब मिलती है।
शिमला में स्कूल की शिक्षा के दौरान कृष्णा सोबती ने निराला को देखा था और वे उनसे बहुत प्रभावित हुईं। उसी समय भगवती चरण वर्मा भी वहाँ आए थे जो विचार पत्रिका निकाल रहे थे। कृष्णा सोबती ने उनसे ऑटोग्राफ भी लिए और विचार का पता भी। विचार में उनकी पहली रचना कविता के रूप में संभवतः: 1939 में 14 साल की उम्र में छपी। बाद में अज्ञेय द्वारा संपादित प्रतीक में उनकी पहली कहानी छपी। कृष्णा सोबती का रचनात्मक लेखन अधिकांशतः: उपन्यास रूप में हुआ। उनकी सारी कहानियों का एक ही संकलन बादलों के घेरे शीर्षक से प्रकाशित हुआ , जिसमें उनकी विभाजन पर बहु चर्चित कहानी सिक्का बादल गया भी शामिल है। कथा साहित्य और कविता के अतिरिक्त कृष्णा जी ने गद्य खूब लिखा, जो अधिकांशतः संस्मरणत्म्क है। जिसके लिए उन्होंने अपना तखल्लुस हशमत रखा। हम हशमत के तीन खंडों के अलावा उन्होंने शब्दों के आलोक में , लद्दख: बुद्ध का कमंडल, लेखक का जनतंत्र, सोबती-वैद संवाद, मार्फत दिल्ली । इनमें कुछ रचनाओं में उनके दूसरों द्वारा लिए गए साक्षात्कार हैं।
कृष्णा सोबती का उपन्यास लेखन डार से बिछुड़ी से शुरू हुआ और मित्रो मरजानी के प्रकाशन ने उन्हें प्रसिद्धि के शिखर पर पहुंचा दिया। यारों के यार:तिन पहाड़, सूरजमुखी अंधेरे के ,जिंदगीनामा— जो उनके लेखन का सबसे महत्वपूर्ण बिन्दु बना , के बाद ऐ लड़की, समय सरगम, जेनी मेहरबान सिंह, दिलो-दानिश, गुजरात पाकिस्तान से गुजरात हिंदुस्तान से होकर फिर पहले और सब से आखिर में छपे उपन्यास चन्नो पर ये सृजनात्मक और शारीरिक यात्रा लगभग साथ साथ समाप्त होती है। जिंदगीनामा को लेखिका ने तीन भागों में प्लान किया था, दूसरे भाग के नाम का जिक्र भी उन्होंने इनक़लाब ज़िंदाबाद के रूप में उन्होंने कर रखा है, लेकिन ये योजना अधूरी ही रही। इसके बारे में मेरा भी उनसे आग्रह रहता था। संभवतः वे इंकलाब जिंदाबाद में गदर पार्टी और भगत सिंह के क्रांतिकारी आंदोलन तक उपन्यास की कथा आगे बढातीं और तीसरे भाग में शायद वे कथा का अंत विभाजन या आज़ादी के बिन्दु पर करतीं। ऐसा हो पाता तो बहुत अच्छा होता। भीष्म साहनी से भी मेरा आग्रह रहता था कि वे मय्या दास की माड़ी का दूसरा खंड लिख कर कथा को 1925-30 से आगे ले जा सकते और आज़ादी संग्राम का व्यापक चित्रण कर पाते। ऐसा हो पाता तो भीष्म साहनी और कृष्णा सोबती; यशपाल के साथ अपने उपन्यासों में भारत का बीसवीं सदी का सृजनात्मक इतिहास भी रच देते, जो उन्होंने रचा तो है, लेकिन अधूरा।
चन्ना के बारे में ये प्रभाव दिया गया है कि ये जिंदगीनामा का ही पूर्व रूप है और इसे सिर्फ एक ऐतिहासिक दस्तावेज़ के रूप में ही देखा जाना चाहिए। लेकिन ये प्रभाव सही नहीं है, यद्यपि दोनों उपन्यासों के वातावरण और चरित्रों में कुछ साम्य लग सकता है, लेकिन दोनों उपन्यासों की कथा अलग है, हाँ परिपक्वता की दृष्टि से चन्ना कम नहीं है, बल्कि कहना चाहिए के 1952 में ही पूरा होने के बाद भारती भंडार इलाहाबाद प्रकाशक वाचस्पति पाठक ने इसे ठीक ही पहचाना था और इसका मुद्रण भी शुरू कर दिया था। कृष्णा सोबती ने उपन्यास की पाण्डुलिपि उनके पास भगवती चरण वर्मा के कहने पर भेजी थी। लगभग एक हज़ार प्रष्ठ की पाण्डुलिपि को क्षेम चंद्र सुमन ने टाइप किया था और इसके मुद्रण प्रूफ लल्लू जी लाल ने पढे थे। पाण्डुलिपि की प्रेस कापी कमलेश्वर ने बनाई थी। हिन्दी के तमाम बड़े और नामी गरामी लेखक कृष्णा सोबती, जो तब तक एक अल्प ज्ञात लेखिका थीं, के प्रथम उपन्यास चन्ना के प्रकाशन की प्रक्रिया में शामिल थे। विवाद पंजाबी भाषा के सम्बोधन वाची शब्दों के हिंदी करण के कारण हुआ। उपन्यास इतना सशक्त था कि प्रकाशक वाचस्पति पाठक, जो तब तक उपन्यास के तीन सौ पृष्ठ मुद्रित कर चुके थे, ने ये सुझाव भी दिया कि उपन्यास के अगले संस्करण में मूल रूप में ही इसको प्रकाशित कर दिया जाएगा। उन दिनों मशीन टाइप विकसित नहीं हुई थी, जिससे आसानी से मुद्रण में तबदीलियाँ हो जातीं। प्रकाशक दोबारा मुद्रण का नुकसान सहन नहीं कर सकता था , इसलिए कृष्णा जी ने उसे मुद्रण का पूरा मूल्य चुका कर पाण्डुलिपि वापिस ली और उसे एक बक्से में बंद कर दिया। राजकमल प्रकाशन की तब की मालिक शीला संधू के चाहने पर 1970 में बक्से से एक बार लेखिका ने उपन्यास बाहर निकाला ज़रूर ,लेकिन थोड़ा सा देख कर उसे फिर वहीं पहुंचा दिया। इस बीच वाचस्पति पाठक ने एक बार फिर उपन्यास प्रकाशित करने की इच्छा भी जाहिर की, लेकिन लेखिका ने मना कर दिया। अब उपन्यास के प्रकाशन के समय लेखिका ने अपनी संक्षिप्त भूमिका में माना है कि इसमें अच्छे उपन्यास की सभी संभावनाएं हैं।
384 पृष्ठ के 81 अध्यायों में बंटे इस उपन्यास का आरंभ चन्ना के ननिहाल में जन्म से होता है, जन्म देकर कुछ दिन बाद उसकी माँ शीला चल बसती है, जो शाहजी की बेटी थी। जिंदगीनामा की अपेक्षा चन्ना की कथा बहुत सुगठित है और बीच बीच में फ़्लैशबैक तकनीक से चलती है। शीला की बेटी अर्थात शाहजी की नतिनी के जन्म के समय उपन्यास की शुरुआत इस वाक्य से होती है-‘कई वर्ष पहले —पाँच रोबीले जमींदार अपनी ज़मीनों का दौरा कर घर लौटे तो ड्योढ़ी पर आसामियों की भीड़ थी……’
जमींदारों और आसामियों के उल्लेख से स्पष्ट है कि ये सामंतवाद का दौर है। शाहजी साहूकार और जमींदार दोनों हैं। क्योंकि गरीब ज़रूरतमन्द किसानों को कर्ज़ दे दे कर उनकी ज़मीनें अब शाहजी के कब्जे में हैं। शाहजी भले एक उदार जमींदार और साहूकार हैं, जो उनका रूप जिंदगीनामा में भी है। जिंदगीनामा और चन्ना के कुछ चरित्र समान हैं-शाहजी , शाहनी, चाची महरी आदि , लेकिन कथा बिलकुल अलग है। शाहनी को चिंता है कि लड़की होने से समस्या उलझ गई। शाह-शाहनी सिर्फ बेटी शीला के माँ बाप हैं, जो कि शादीशुदा है और जनेपे के लिए मायके आई है। उधर शीला के पति ने दूसरा ब्याह कर रखा है, लेकिन दूसरी पत्नी के भी औलाद नहीं है। दोनों बड़े घराने हैं-अच्छी संपत्ति वाले। वे चाहते थे कि लड़का हो जो दोनों घरों की जायदाद संभाले। लेकिन शाह मौका संभालते हैं और जशन मनाने का हुक्म देते हैं। शाहजी ने शीला को स्यालकोट के प्रसिद्ध व्यापारी लाला दीवान चंद के बेटे धर्मपाल को ब्याहा था। शादी के बाद व्यापार के सिलसिले में धर्मपाल बंबई चले गए। धर्मपाल की माँ गुज़र चुकी थीं इसलिए शाहजी ने चाची महरी और अपने विश्वसनीय नौकर नंदू को शीला के साथ रहने के लिए ससुराल भेजा। धर्मपाल के पिता के भी अचानक देहांत होने से शीला घर में और अकेली हो गयी। धर्मपाल बंबई में अपनी पूर्व परिचित श्यामा के प्रेम में बह निकला और महीने भर बाद बंबई लौट गया। बंबई से वह श्यामा को ब्याह कर साथ लेकर ही लौटा जो शीला के लिए एक मानसिक और भावनात्मक आघात था। शीला के पिता शाह जी उसे वापिस मायके ले आना चाहते थे लेकिन शाहनी ने व्यावहारिक दृष्टि से शीला के ससुराल रहने में ही भलाई समझी। शीला और श्यामा कई महीनों बाद पहली बार किसी सामाजिक कार्यक्रम में मिली तो शीला ने श्यामा के साथ बहिन जैसा सलूक किया और एक घर में दोनों ने अलग अलग कमरों में जीवन यात्रा शुरू की।
इस बीच श्यामा के भाई की बीमारी की वजह से भाई जगदीश के पास गई तो अरसे बाद धर्मपाल को एहसास हुआ कि उसने शीला से ज्यादती की है और उनके बीच टूटा रिश्ता फिर जुड़ा। श्यामा के लौटने पर धर्मपाल की उलझन बढ़ी तो दोनों परेशान हुईं और शीला ने कुछ दिनों के लिए मायके जाने का फैसला किया। लेकिन जाने से पहले तीनों ने साथ खाना पीना शुरू किया और शीला ने श्यामा को छोटी बहू कहना शुरू किया। मायके जाते समय शीला ने कहा कि शायद अब लौटना न ही हो।
मायके में शीला की देखभाल के लिए शीला के बेटी पैदा होने के कारण डाक्टर धनराज को बुला लिया गया जिसने विधुर होकर बुढ़ापे में 20-22 वर्ष की लड़की से विवाह कर लिया था और उसके बेटे नाराज़ थे। मायके से शीला ने पति को पहला पत्र लिखा और कुछ समय बाद धर्मपाल के पास शाह जी , यहाँ से शीला के लड़की होने की खबर पहुंची। अगले दिन धर्मपाल ने ससुराल जाने का फैसला किया, लेकिन धर्मपाल जब तक पहुँचते, तब तक शीला प्राण छोड़ चुकी थी। शीला के अंतिम संस्कार के बाद, अपनी बेटी को एक बार देख कर सास-ससुर के साथ आँसू बहा कर धर्मपाल लौट गए। चाची महरी जिसने शीला को बेटी की तरह पाला था, को शीला की बेटी से विरक्ति सी हो गयी, लेकिन कुछ महीने बाद उसका दुख पिघला और उसने शीला की बेटी को शीला की तरह ही पालना शुरू किया। बैसाखी के अवसर पर शीला की बेटी का नाम चन्ना रखा गया। उधर श्यामा ने धर्मपाल से आग्रह किया कि वह चन्ना को वहाँ ले आए। इस बीच धर्मपाल के घर में कश्मीर से एक प्रौढ़ महिला आई, जिसके अनुसार धर्मपाल के पिता लाला दीवान चंद छुट्टियाँ उसके साथ बिताते थे यानि प्रेमिका। उसने आश्रय चाहा, धर्मपाल और श्यामा ने उसे उसकी भांजी कम्मों सहित घर में रख लिया
चन्ना जब पाँच साल की हुई तो उसके नाना-नानी उसे देवी दर्शन के बाद उसके पिता धर्मपाल के पास स्यालकोट ले गए। चन्ना अपने पिता धर्मपाल से पहली बार मिलने पर भी बिना संकोच के हिल मिल गयी। शाहनी ने श्यामा को बेटी जैसा स्नेह दिया। शाहनी को वहाँ लाला जी की प्रौढ़ा प्रेमिका अर्थात समधिन भी मिल गई, जिससे शाह कभी पहले लाला जी के साथ मिल चुके थे। कुछ समय बाद शाह दंपति चन्ना के साथ लौट गए।
इधर कम्मों के प्रति धर्मपाल का बढ़ता आकर्षण देख, मौसी ने कम्मों का ब्याह चौधरी धनी राम के लड़के तुलसी से कर दिया।
चन्नों को मदरसे पढ़ने भेजा गया , वह अब बड़ी हो रही थी और मन मरज़ी की मालिक भी। लड़कों के साथ भी खेलती कूदती और लड़ भी लेती थी। उधर श्यामा के भाई जगदीश का विवाह हो गया था, श्यामा के लौटने पर शाह जी चन्ना को लेकर धर्मपाल के पास आए, चन्ना की देखभाल के लिए सईदा बीबी साथ थी। चन्ना अपनी सौतेली माँ श्यामा से खूब हिल मिल गयी। इस बार शाह उसे साथ गाँव नहीं ले जा सके। कुछ समय बाद चन्नो, सईदा बीबी के साथ गाँव लौटी। तभी शाहनी बीमार पड़ीं और अचानक चल बसीं। चन्नो तो शाहनी को माँ समझती थी, क्योंकि पली उसी के पास थी। शाह जी ने चन्ना को सईदा बीबी के साथ अब शहर भेज दिया, वहीं उसे स्कूल में दाखिल करवाया गया। कुछ समय बाद चन्ना ने नानी के पास जाने की ज़िद की, तब सईदा ने उसे समझाया कि नानी उसे अब कभी नहीं मिलेगी, तब चन्ना के आँसू आए और उसने मृत्यु का यथार्थ स्वीकार किया। स्कूल में पढ़ते हुए ही चन्ना ने रजस्वला होने के आरंभ को भी अनुभव किया और उसके साथ मानसिक और शारीरिक तबदीलियों को भी। स्कूल की शिक्षिका मिस पाल से चन्ना को विशेष लगाव होता है। चन्ना बीच बीच में ननिहाल जाती और नाना के साथ ज़मीनों पर भी घूम आती। स्कूल की पढ़ाई खतम कर आगे की पढ़ाई के लिए चन्ना को लाहौर के कालेज में भेजा गया।
गाँव में शाह जी कि चींताएँ बढ़ रही हैं, क्योंकि नए कानून में ज़मीनों पर शाह का उतना अधिकार नहीं रहेगा और ज़मीनें कर्जदार किसानों को लौटानी भी पड सकती हैं। कालेज में पहली बार हॉस्टल के अनुभव भी चन्ना ने किए, अपनी रूममेट बाला से खट्टे मीठे अनुभव, फिर धीरे धीरे हॉस्टल में रहने की आदत डाली। धर्मपाल एक शादी के सिलसिले में लाहौर आए तो दो दिन चन्ना के साथ बिताए। धर्मपाल कुछ उदास थे और चन्ना पिता के प्रति कुछ भावुक॰
शाह जी को ज़मीन संबंधी बिल पास होने पर कुछ चिंता हुई। उन्हें पारिवारिक झगड़ा याद आने लगा। शाह जी के दादा कर्मशा और कृपाराम के दादा धर्मशा भाई थे। धर्मशा ने जायदाद खाने पीने में उड़ा दी। उनके लड़के रामशा के पास बचा सिर्फ घर। और रामशा अपने रिश्ते के भाई और शाह जी पिता कान्हेशा से संपत्ति में हिस्से की इच्छा करने लगे, जिसके लिए रामशा के मरने के बाद उनके बेटे कृपाराम ने कचहरी जाकर ही दम लिया। मुकदमा तो वह हारा लेकिन फिर परिवार के संबंध टूट गए। शाहनी के जाने के बाद और घर में कोई पुरुष ना रहने से शाह जी मन में कृपा राम और उसके बेटे भागा का ख्याल आया। चाची महरी और नजदीकी लोगों ने इस ख्याल को गलत समझा क्योंकि कृपा राम और भागे की प्रतिष्ठा अच्छी नहीं थी। लेकिन विरोध किसी ने नहीं किया। और दोनों शाह जी का खत पाकर दौड़े आए। चाची महरी और सईदा बीबी को बाप दिल का काला और लड़का शोहदा लगा।
चन्ना कालेज की छुट्टियों में गाँव नाना या शहर पिता के पास जाने की दुविधा में थी। वह शहर को चली तो घर पहुँचने तक उसके पिता धर्मपाल का अचानक देहांत हो चुका था और घर में कोहराम मचा था। पिता के मित्र रामलाल के यहाँ चन्ना ने दुख बांटा। घर में विधवा श्यामा के भाई जगदीश ने घर का हिसाब किताब संभाला और चन्ना से गाँव जाने की अपेक्षा की, लेकिन चन्ना ने गाँव जाने से मना कर दिया। चन्ना ने पिता की कार बेचने से मना कर दिया, लेकिन जगदीश मामू को अपनी पत्नी और बच्चे को वहीं पिता के घर में बुला लिया, जब उसे छूटियाँ खतम होने पर कालेज लौटना था। कालेज से परीक्षाएँ खत्म होने के बाद चन्ना ने गाँव का रुख किया। गाँव के बाहर ही उसने भागे को उसकी उद्दंडता की कड़ी सज़ा भी दे दी, बिना जाने कि वह आजकल उसी के घर में रह रहा है। भागा घर में चाची महरी से भी बदतमीजी करता है और चन्ना को भी बदज़बान होकर बोलता है। चन्ना उसे मामू कहती है लेकिन उसने उसका ऊपर अपने हिस्से में आना बंद कर दिया और कह दिया कि उसे खाना नीचे उसके रहने की जगह ही मिलेगा। चन्ना ने कृपा राम और भागे को दरकिनार करके ज़मीनों के मामले भी खुद सुलझाए और शाह जी खामोश रहे। लौटने से पहले चन्ना ने कृपा राम और भागे को उधेड डाला और तमाम ताकीदें करके गई।
गाँव से चन्ना छूटियाँ खत्म होने के बाद लाहौर लौटी, अपनी सखी बाला से मिली। कालेज में कई लड़कों से चन्ना की दोस्ती रही, लेकिन किसी से भावनात्मक रिश्ता नहीं बना। पिता के दोस्तों के बेटे उसे प्रभावित करने की कोशिश करते रहे, जैसे बलवंत और सुरेश। उधर गाँव में भागा शाह जी की हत्या करवा देता है ताकि जायदाद हथिया सके। चन्ना तो गाँव पहुंची ही, उसकी सौतेली माँ श्यामा भी पहुंची। चन्ना ने रोने पीटने के सब रिवाजों को मना कर दिया और संस्कार के बाद श्यामा के साथ पिता के घर लौट गयी। कालेज लौटने पर चन्ना के बचपन के गाँव में साथ खेलने वाले फेजू ने हॉस्टल आकर चाची महरी का रुक्का दिया जिसमें शाहजी कि हत्या का भागे द्वारा किए जाने का विवरण था। बूटा सिंह ने शाह जी की लाश को नहलाते वक़्त उनकी छाती पर पड़ा नील का गहरा निशान देखा था। भागे ने भी गर्वोक्ति की थी कि शाह को ऐसे मारा। चन्ना ने फैजु के सामने कोई प्रतिक्रिया नहीं दी ।
राम लाल परिवार के साथ चन्ना और श्यामा शिमला जाते हैं, जहां उनके पहले से बुक कमरे अंग्रेज़ अधिकारी को दे दिये जाते हैं और उन्हें दूसरे कमरों पर समझौता करना पड़ता है। रामलाल दंपति का बेटा डाक्टर कमल साथ है और सबको चन्ना और कमल के साथी बनाने की इच्छा है। श्यामा का शिमला में ही अचानक निधन हो जाता है। चन्ना श्यामा के भाई जगदीश को घर की देखभाल के लिए कह देती है। श्यामा की इच्छा मुताबिक वह कमल को नजदीक समझ कर भी अपना नहीं पाती, लेकिन कमल से अपना दुख ज़रूर सांझा कर लेती है। और अंत में एक बार फिर गाँव जाकर छोटे नाना और भागे मामू की करतूतों को देखती है और ज़मीन छुडवाती है और इन शब्दों से उपन्यास समाप्त होता है कि ‘वह शाह की धेवती है, शाह नहीं तो आज शाह की नातिन तो है।‘
कृष्ण सोबती का ये प्रथम उपन्यास कई मायनों में दिलचस्प है। पहली बात तो यह कि उपन्यास लेखिका की पहली रचना लगती ही नहीं और किसी परिपक्व उपन्यासकार की प्रौढ़ रचना प्रतीत होती है। पता नहीं क्यों लेखिका ने इतने सुगठित उपन्यास को प्रकाशन के काबिल नहीं समझा। उपन्यास का दूसरा विशेष पक्ष इसका स्त्री केन्द्रित होना है। जीवन की परिस्थितियों ने चन्ना को अजीब हालत में डाल दिया है, जहां वह दो परिवारों की इकलौती वारिस है। अपने पिता और अपने नाना के-दोनों समृद्ध घरानों में कोई लड़का वारिस नहीं है, सिर्फ चन्ना ही बची है। चन्ना की सौतेली माँ के भी गुज़र जाने पर अब उसे ही घर की जायदाद संभालनी है। उधर नाना ने गुजरने से पहले भले ही अपने चचेरे भाई और भतीजे को पुराना पारिवारिक झगड़ा भुला कर अपने पास बुला लिया है, लेकिन उनके रंग ढंग ऐसे हैं कि चन्ना को वहाँ भी ज़मीन बचाने के लिए कुछ कठोर निर्णय लेने पड़ते हैं। उपन्यास जहां समाप्त होता है, वहाँ नाना के गाँव के सामंती माहौल की झलक मिलती है…शाह नहीं तो शाह की धेवती तो है और शाह जैसी प्रवृति के साथ चन्ना अपने आस पास के माहौल का मुकाबला करने के लिए तैयार होती है।
कृष्णा सोबती के उपन्यासों विशेषतः: जिंदगीनामा और चन्ना या फिर दिलो-दानिश में भी सामंतवाद का एक आकर्षक और रोमांटिक रूप भी उघड़ता है। जैसे बड़े सामंतों या समृद्ध शहरी परिवारों के पुरुषों के विवाहेतर संबंध एक सामान्य बात है और विवाहिता स्त्री के लिए उसके साथ समझौता ही एकमात्र विकल्प है। विवाहिता स्त्री को ये सामंती पुरुष पूरा सम्मान देते हैं और शायद प्यार भी, लेकिन ‘अन्या’ को भी सम्मान और आर्थिक सुरक्षा मिलती है। यही स्थिति स्त्री के लिए उपलब्ध नहीं है, भले ही वह मित्रो की तरह सेक्स की प्यासी और पति से असंतुष्ट क्यों ना हो। भले ही कुछ समय के लिए वह सम्बन्धों में कुछ छूट ले ले , जैसे सूरजमुखी अंधेरे के की बलात्कार प्रताड़ित नायिका विवाहित पुरुष से संबंध स्थापित कर बलात्कार के मनोवैज्ञानिक घाव से मुक्ति प्राप्त कर लेती है, लेकिन पुरुष पर अपना कोई विवाह का अधिकार नहीं assert करती। ऐ लड़की में बुजुर्ग माँ भले ही लड़की को अपने अनुभवों से बगावत और अधिकार का संदेश देती है ,लेकिन लड़की सब समझ कर भी परंपरा के दायरे से बाहर नहीं जाती।
सामंती परिवेश के बावजूद कृष्णा सोबती के स्त्री चरित्र व्यक्तिगत स्तर पर मजबूत और दिलचस्प रूप रखते हैं। चन्ना का किरदार भी एक जटिल किरदार है, जिसने मुश्किल हालात में अपना स्वतंत्र व्यक्तित्व हासिल किया है। शायद कृष्णा सोबती के अपने व्यक्तित्व की कुछ झलक भी चन्ना में है। क्योंकि लेखिका ने इतना बड़ा उपन्यास 27 वर्ष की उम्र में ही 1952 में पूरा कर लिया था और अपनी पहली इतनी बड़ी कथात्मक रचना में लेखक के अपने व्यक्तित्व की झलक किसी चरित्र में ज़रूर झलकती है और लेखिका की पारिवारिक पृष्ठभूमि में चन्ना जैसी लड़की उनके अपने व्यक्तित्व के करीब लगती है।
चन्ना के कुछ और स्त्री किरदार भी अपना मजबूत पक्ष प्रस्तुत करते हैं, जिनमें चाची मेहरी भी हैं। जिंदगीनामा के साथ अगर चन्ना का दूर से ही कोई संबंध दिखता है तो चाची मेहरी के रूप में है। क्योंकि जिंदगीनामा में इस किरदार की ऐसी ही भूमिका शाह पुत्र लाली देख भाल और चन्ना में चन्ना की देख भाल रूप में नज़र आती है। यहाँ उसे स्पष्ट रूप शाह परिवार की सदस्य रूप में ना दिखा कर लगभग सेविका रूप में दिखाया है, जबकि जिंदगीनामा में वह शाह परिवार की बहू है। शाह जी के छोटे भाई गणपत की निस्संतान विधवा। चन्ना की माँ शीला के साथ उसकी ससुराल में वह एक और सेवक के साथ आती है, उसकी वहीं रह कर देख भाल के लिए। एक सामंती समाज में ही यह हो सकता था कि किसी सामंत की बेटी की ससुराल में उसके साथ सेवा के लिए दो दो सेवक साथ दहेज की तरह जाए। जिंदगीनामा के शाह जी ने एक सौ एक रुपये से शुरू कर पूरे गाँव के किसानों की ज़मीन हथिया ली थी, तो चन्ना के शाह के पास भी कर्ज़ में डूबे किसानों की अपार ज़मीनें हैं, जिन्हें अब नए बने कानून के तहत लौटाना पड रहा है।
शीला और श्यामा दोनों धर्मपाल की सह पत्नियाँ हैं, लेकिन दोनों ही दबे हुए किरदार हैं। ऐसे ही मिस पाल आदि किरदार भी दबे हुए हैं। चन्ना इन सब की अपेक्षा एक ऐसा किरदार है जिसके जीवन में तीन तीन पुरुष करीबी दोस्त बन कर आते हैं, लेकिन वह इतनी सचेत है कि दोस्त और जीवन साथी के फर्क को पूरी सजगता से पहचानती है। संभव है कि आज के बदले हालात में चन्ना इनमें किसी एक मित्र के साथ विवाह की बजाय सह जीवन का विकल्प चुन लेती। या चन्ना की कथा आगे बढ़ती तो उसके व्यक्तित्व के और पक्ष खुलते।
चन्ना में औपनेविशिक शासन का सिर्फ एक संदर्भ शिमला में होटल बुक करने के संदर्भ में मिलता है, जब श्यामा और उनके मित्र परिवार द्वारा पहले से बुक कमरों को केंसिल कर अंग्रेज़ अधिकारियों को बिना अग्रिम बुकिंग के दे दिया जाता है और इन दोनों परिवारों को ठेस लगती है। जिंदगीनामा में आज़ादी संग्राम के चित्र भी मिल जाते हैं। 1907 के पंजाब के भगत सिंह के चाचा अजीत सिंह के नेतृत्व में लड़े पगड़ी संभाल जट्टा किसान आंदोलन और किसान समर्थक राष्ट्रीय पंजाबी कवि लाल चंद फलक को जेल भेजने की चर्चा भी है और 1914-15 के अमरीका में शुरू हुए गदर क्रांतिकारी आंदोलन की भी। जिंदगीनामा में पंजाब की ग्रामीण लोक संस्कृति का जैसा मोहक चित्रण हुआ है, वैसा चन्ना में नहीं मिलता। लेकिन दोनों उपन्यासों के कथा संदर्भ भी अलग हैं। चन्ना में लाहौर और सियालकोट जैसे शहरों के भी व्यापक चित्र हैं और बंबई की व्यापक चर्चा भी उपन्यास में मिलती है, यहाँ तक के लन्दन के संदर्भ भी मिलते हैं, जबकि जिंदगीनामा पूरी तरह से ग्रामीण संस्कृति और परिवेश पर केन्द्रित था।
कुल मिला कर चन्ना भले ही कृष्णा सोबती का रचा पहला उपन्यास हो, लेकिन इस उपन्यास की कथा में सुगठता और सुघडता ऐसी है जो कृष्णा सोबती की रचनाकार की पहले से बनी प्रतिष्ठा को और बढ़ाने वाली है। बल्कि कहना चाहिए कि अगर ये उपन्यास 1952-53 में ही छप गया होता तो कृष्णा सोबती शायद हिन्दी की सबसे प्रतिष्ठित युवा लेखिका का दर्जा फणीश्वर नाथ रेणु जैसे वरिष्ठ लेखकों के वक़्त में ही हासिल कर लेतीं। सो कृष्णा सोबती ने 27 साल की उम्र में अपना पहला उपन्यास ही शाहकार लिखा लेकिन विडम्बना यह कि उसे छपवाया उम्र के आखिरी दिनों में!
Books Read in year 2022
Book Notes in 2022
January
1. Bhullar Jasbir, Khido(Punjabi Novel), Chandigarh, Lokgeet Prakashan, 2021 Ist ed. Pages 158, price 250/
Khido is a Punjabi novel, written by Jasbir Bhullar. The immediate context of the novel is Punjab state awards controversy, for which even a court case is filed in Ludhiana court and awards have been stayed. Khido meaning Ball is a term used for showing that awards have become ball to play for some powerholders in literary world, who are not writers, but brokers of awards. Novel is divided into six parts and have accompanying sketches with each part by artist Madan Lal. In first part awards were shown given by Punjab State Govt. under Akalis, when first time ten lakh award for Sahit Ratan was introduced and in very first meeting three members of advisory board itself were given those awards, by asking them to go out of the meeting till their names are discussed for awards and after their names are finalized for awards, they are invited back to the meeting. But from Punjab state the scen shifts to national scene where Sahitya Akademi gives awards to 21 or more Indian languages and in Punjabi, the powerful brokers from universities are deciding the awards at both state and at national level. A young PhD scholar of the University goes to a publisher for getting her poetry collection published and the publishers and Dr. Hira, fictitious name for Satinder Singh Noor enters the scene. The central story is of Noor’s hold on awards at state and national level and his gang operating at various levels, including using women for their lust in the name of providing them literary name and fame. The novel ends at a tragic note, where the award-winning female author commits suicide, when her husband accidentally get the letter meant for her by Hira. There is mixture of fiction and reality in the novel, even some characters have their real names used, but where real names are not used, even fictitious name’s identity is more or less clear to literary politics knowing readers. In real life things happen bit differently and the suicide of the author is rather figurative in author’s own imagination. Artistically novel in weak in the treatment of the theme, it is too ugly in presenting the characters. Yet the core of characters is correctly underlined, even if it is not presented with aestheticism and in complex manner, as the reality is more complex.
Overall, the novel touches the raw nerve of Punjabi literary politics, which is true in case of many other Indian languages too. Hope a better novel and a better critique of the issue shall come up in next few years as the seemingly untouchable topic has been now becomes touchable, but still touchy!
Good that new year has begun with one book in a day that too from literature and more concretely novel-my first love and liberator from the drab life I was living sixty years ago!
2. Sen Anikendra, Datta Devangshu and Raoy Nilanjna S (Ed.), Patriots, Poets and Prisoners: Selections from Ramanand Chatterjee’s The Modern Review, 1907-47, NOIDA, HarperCollins India, 2016, pages 352
The book carries introduction by Ramchandra Guha and the collection is dedicated “To independent India and to liberal values, two things that Ramanand Chatterjee fought for.’ The Modern Review journal was started by Ramanand Chatterjee in 1907 and it continued after Chatterjee’s death in 1943. It was one of most influential journal and people involved in freedom struggle, belonging to even revolutionary stream were aware of it and read it. The journal represented the galaxy of writers from Gandhi, Nehru Subhash to Tagore, Premchand and more.
In the beginning, Guha in his introduction underlined the importance of The Modern Review as journal and Ramanand Chatterjee as editor of the journal. Foreword is A note by the editors. The selection begins with an article by Ramanand himself-Towards Home Rule and then moves on to other authors selected for this collection-Sister Nivedita, Lala Lajpat Rai, M K Gandhi, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, R S Pandit, Sant Nihal Singh, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Satyendra Chandra Mitra, C F Andrews, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Verrier Alwin, Premchand, Sita Devi, Bibhutibhusahn Bandyopadhyay, Albert Einstein, Roman Rolland, Nirmal Kumar Bose, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Atul Home. The book ends with 1947: Dawn of A New Age with Nehru’s first address from Red Fort as Prime Minister of independent India on 15th August 1947.
The book has varied forms of selection, mostly these are political writings of eminent Indian freedom struggle, but it has fair sprinkling of literature of eminent writers of that time and which includes translation from other languages, as Premchand is translated from Hindi. Apart from fiction, poetry is also included.
Ramanand Chatterjee also brought out Prabasi in Bengali and Vishal Bharat in Hindi from his press in Calcutta. Vishal Bharat was edited among others by Banarsi Das Chaturvedi for some time.
The book has many interesting and historic writings included in the collection as debate between Gandhi and Lajpat Rai, Subhas story of escape, Nehru’s self-critical write up in fictitious name of Chankya. Interviews of Einstein was conducted by Tagore, of Romand Rolland by Subhas Bose and of Gandhi by Nirmal Bose. Subhas and Nehru memoirs of Europe are literary in style.
Bhagat Singh had written to Ramanand Chatterjee from Lahore jail a response to his editorial about Inqlab Zindabad slogan, which was published in The Tribune, it seems it was not published or reached The Modern Review. It would have been good, if editors and Ramchandra Guha had cleared about that, even the inclusion of that letter would have made the volume richer.
In totality it is a pleasant read.
3. Delhi Govt. Text book, Hamare Deshbhakat Krantikari, SCERT, Education dept., Govt. of NCT, Delhi, pages 102, not priced
This book has been published as text book for Delhi govt.’s newly introduced deshbhakti curriculum in schools from 6th to 12th class. For which class this book is prescribed, it is not known. Teachers of each class have been given separate modules for each class, so can not be known how they are going to teach. The editorial names are given, but they are mostly school teachers or officials of SCERT. About one hundred freedom fighters/revolutionaries one page each sketch mostly are given, in some cases it has gone into two pages also. Selection of patriots is good, spread over to all regions, linguistic groups and and communities. However, the text of many fighters is poor and not facts based. Date of birth or date of martyrdom or death is not given. It seems it has been done hurriedly and no vetting from any historian has been done. Such books should be written by historians and not assigned to teachers of any subject or any class. The book needs radical revision. Some eminent names are also left like Moti Lal Nehru, Periyar, Vithal Bhai Patel etc.
February
4. Arshi, Prache, Second Chance (Novel)
The first reaction after reading this novel is that it is childish novel. Prache Arshi is a young film maker and whe wrote her maiden fiction, which is impacted by her film making as the novel is structured like script in some matters. She has used bold and italics fonts on some paragraphs in between the narration. That is like author explaining, which is at form level does not go well with narration. Reader is not left to understand, but author intervenes to explain, not a good technique.
It is story of new social media age young person’s story set in metropolis city Mumbai. Deeksha daughter of a industrialist gets trapped by Sidharth, a fellow student in college, who is already involved with Deeksha friend Sunny. In a childish story, Deeksha runs with him to Male in Maldive, where after sucking her and taking her money and jewellary, he runs away hurting her so much that she attempts suicide. She survives and a psychiatrist Akshay trates her. Later she comes for college education to Delhi, where Akshay meets her again by chance. She remains her student for two years then returns to Mumbai. She wishes to start an agency to help heartbroken people as she herself suffered. Deeksha and Akshay create a company called Second Chance, recruit staff and help few cases. Deeksha takes Akshay to her parents back, whom he left five years ago. On return, he sees Sidharth in her office and she thrashes him. Now story becomes like crime thriller, finally Deeksha and Sidharth decide to marry.
5. Gursharn Singh/Balraj Sagar, Jallianwala Bagh: Ikk Jhalak(Who is Who) (Panjabi), Chandigarh, Panjab State Universaity Text Book Board, 1996, pages 238
This is one of very important book on the historic tragic event of India’s freedom struggle. This is data-based book which has given many charts including that of names and details of 464 persons, who were among those 1000+ people who died on that fateful day of 13th April 1919 at Amritsar. Out of 464, three were women, 276 were Hindus, 127 including three women were Sikhs and 61 were Muslims. The youngest to killed was one year old. Large number was of young people. There are charts of many other cases. The book has been based on very authentic accounts of Jallianwala Bagh incident. Jallianwala Bagh map is missing from this book. Main events listed in the book are-
Leader Case, Girls school case, Gango bridge case, National Bank murder case, Chartered Bank case, Miss Sherwood case, Mrs. Eesden case, Robinson murder case, Chhehrta case, Lahore upper Mall riot case, Lahori Gate riot case, Leaders case, Badshahi mosque case, Danda army case, Hira Mandi case, Wagha rail derailment case, Govt. vs Moti Ram case, Ghumanpura rail derailment case, Hafizabad case, Nizamabad riot case, Gujranwala leaders case, Akalgarh riot case, Dhaban Singh riot case, Aulkh Villgae case, Gujarat case, Malkawal case, Jalalpur Jattan riot case, Kasur supplementary case, Khemkaran station case, Sangla hill case and Moman station case. Timeline of the incidents is also given.
Reference is also given of MA Jinnah, BN Sharma and BD Shukla resignations, order of going into street by lying down. 219 important persons involved in whole tragedy’s details are also given
6. Rakesh Kumar, Gulab Kaur, Gadar Lahir de Daler Yodha, 2020, Chitna Prakashan ludhiana pages 152
Bibi Gulab Kaur, the brave fighter of Gadar party’s life had been shrouded in mystry. Even her proper dates were not known, though lot many novles, poems and plays etc have been written on her life, some biographies are also written. Rakesh Kumar has first time brought to record her proper dates. Born in 1890, she joined Gadar party people ship coming to India in 1914 and took part in Gadar pary activities and got imprisoned for two years during 1915 -17. She left her husband as he showed cowardice at Philipines for not joing the ship. She had breast cancer and could not live much and died on 28th July 1925. It is good authentic biography, though filled with Gadar poetry and other details of other Gadarites.
7. Ram Ronki, Pagdi Sambhal Lehar to Sanyukar Kisan Morcha: A Century of Panjabi Kisan Struggle 1907-21, Chandigarh, Unistar Books, 2022, pages 130
Ronki Ram has quickly collected this book, rather it was a paper earlier and he has expanded it a bit. Mostly it is sketchy narration of present farmers struggle, but some good photographs and reference to earlier movements like pre partition and post partition muzara movements have made it a useful read. In appendices, the text of three farm laws, their repeal and the agreement letter has been included.
8. Gupt Mohan, Bhulaye Na Bane (Hindi), Kolkata, Pratishruti Prakashan, 2022, pages 176
It is book of memoirs of those who had come into Mohan Gupt’s life. Some are close friends, some are from whom the author is impressed and one is of his boss Shiela Sandhu, with whom he had bitter-sweet relationship. Some memoirs are good.
9. Bal Amandeep (ed.), Reimagining Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: Centennial Commemoration 1919-2019, Amritsar, GNDU, 2020, pages 256
During centennial commemoration of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, many new books/volumes/journals have been published, apart from other functions, renovation or beautification of the monument have been done. This has led to many controversies too.
Present edited bilingual volume is collection of 13 papers, ten in English and three in Punjabi. It is edited y Amandeep Ba, Professor and head of History department of History of Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar. Some historic documents have been included in appendices. Usual foreword by university publications is by Vice Chancellor of the University. Preface by editor Bal has drawn attention to number of books published earlier as well as during centenary year. In appendices, five official notifications have been reproduced, including Martial law notifications. Chronology of events is useful as well as bibliography and index.
English papers are by Bhagwan Josh, Kamlesh Mohan, Harish Sharma, Sukhdev Sohal, Sukhmani Riar, Amandeep Bal, MY Ganai, Jasvir Singh, Rajkumar and Kamaljit Kaur. Panjabi ones are by Joginder Singh Parminder Singh and Baljit Singh Virk. Generally, all the papers are good and covers varied aspects, Amandeep Bal paper brings socio-economic background of the people involved in the events is commendable. On the whole it is a good collection.
March
10. Sidhu, S Gurumel, Hindustan da Azadi Sangram: Gadri Lahiran di Hissedari (Punjabi), Chandigarh, Lokgeet Prakashan, 2020, Pages 876, Price 1195/ Rupees
This huge book is a bird’s eye view of the revolutionary part of the freedom struggle as the title reveals. It begins from 1757 occupation of India by East India company and a number of revolts against company raj from 1757 to 1857-for hundred years and then from 1858 to 1947 against direct British colonial rule. Though the company Raj was also regulated by British parliament and laws framed by it. In his short preface Dr. Sidhu, who is a scientist and Professor at California state University at Fresno, has underlined that event narrated in this history have been added with authentic sources and he had referred to all his sources at the end of each chapter. The book is divided into 46 chapters and first chapter is focused on pre-1856 revolts and the last chapter on why Gadahr movement failed. However last but one chapter no 45 is focused on Indian National Army (INA) of Netaji Subhas Bose of 1941-45 movement. Writer has missed last but very significant movement Royal Indian Navy revolt of 1946, a year before British left India. Navy revolt had played a significant role in making British quit India earlier than what they might have thought about.
Beginning with pre-1856 revolts, writer gives the brief outline of formation and entry of East Indian company in India. Company was formed by some London merchants under royal charter on 31st December 1600 AD.
Thomas Roe got the license from Moghul emperor Jahangir during his rule from 1605 to 1627. Company ship with trade items landed in Surat port. By deceiving Moghul kings, they started taking part in politics and created their own army as well. The first major clash took with Nawab Sirajudualla in 1757 at Plassey and company army defeated Nawab, betrayed by his own kins and others and company started ruling India by dividing, bribing and using force to control India and slowly their rule spread to large parts of India. Another major clash was with Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan Kings of Mysore, British forces killed Tipu Sultan in 1799. Next was Vellore war in 1806. South Indian historians call Vellore revolt to be the first war of independence, fifty years prior to 1857. Next clash was with Wahabi movement. Titu Mir was Bengal’s brave soldier and had a following of 15000 thousand people. There were lot many peasants revolt and Adivasi revolts too in this period. Fakir and Sanyasi revolts. Sufi Fakir Majnu Shah and Sanyasi Bhawani Patahk led these revolts of peasants. There was indigo revolt in 1804-60, farmers were compelled to grow indigo for British profits, in this revolt Dinanath Mitra wrote famour play Neel Darpan in Bengali. There was Tilka Majhi revolt in Bhagapur in late 1770-80. Santhal revolt by Sidho-Kanu Murmi brothers during 18055-57 and Munda revolt by Birsa Munda during 1899-1900 were all glorious resistance by Indian people against British company rule. There were Jaintia, Garo and Kol revolts as well.
Apart from pre 1856 revolts, the author has briefly referred to post 1857 political movements also in this chapter such as Khilafat movement of 1916, Mozilla revolt of Kerala, Deobandi movement of 1867-1947, Silken movement, Khudai Khidamatgar movement of Badshah Khan, Khaksar movement of 1930-47 of Alama Mashraqi, State people’s or Praja Mandal movement, Though these movemnts don’t fit into subject of first chapter, but author has included.
2nd and third chapter are focused on 1857 wider revolt known as first Indian war of independence. This chapter refers to Ajnala’s Kalianwala Khuh also where 287 Indian army men were buried and killed. Though Sikh kings sided with British, ordinary Sikhs sided with revolt. Fourth chapter is devoted to Bhai Maharaj Singh born in 1780, who fought in anglo-sikh war and died in jail in 1856 in Singapore after brutal tortures of British. Fifth to ninth chpters are focused on Namdhari or kuka movement, in which 66 Kukas were brutally shot dead without any legal process, they were just blown up before canons. They were blown up on 17-18th January 1872. Guru Ram Singh was exiled to Burma, where he died on 29th November 1885, this is not mentioned in the book. Guru Ram Singh had appointed 22 Subas, state leaders, which included one woman too. 10th Chapter is on Saragarhi war fought on behalf of British Govt., since 21 Sikhs fighting there against large Pathan rebels showed exemplary bravery and all died fighting, Sikhs take pride in this war as Dalits take in Bheema Koregaon war where Mahars fought for Britishers but defeated Maratha high castes.
11th Chapter it on Indians beginning to go abroad and from 12th to 29th chapters are focussed on different stages of Ghadar party movement, including two chapters on Kamagatamaru. The complete list of Kamagatamaru passengers is given. Chpater 30th and 31st are focused on Jallianwala Bagh massacres and a list of 412 Jallianwala Bagh martyrs is given. Chapter 32nd is on Udham Singh and 33rd chapter is focussed on poetry on Jallianwala Bagh. Chapter 34 is on Lahore Conspiracy case of Bhagat Singh and others. Chapter 35 is probably translation of The Ghadar directory of 1935, having entries of 628 Ghadarites plus 26 names of Ghadarites.36th chapter is focused on Gurdwara reform movement and details of Nankana Sahib and Jaitu Morhcas are given in 37th chapter. 89 names of Nankana Sahib martyrs are given out of nearly 150 killed. Number of martyrs of Jaitu Morhca are also given. Chapter 38th is focused on Babbar Akali movement. 39th chapter gives detailed notes on some unique revolutionaries like Arjan Singh Gadgaj, Teja Singh Sutantar, Ajit Singh, Bhai Balwant Singh, Madan Lal Dhingra, Maulvi Barkatullah, 40th chapter reverses back to Ghadar party’s form in India. Chapter 41at is on Kirti Magazine began in 1926 in Punjabi by Bhai Santokh Singh and later edited by Sohan Singh Josh with edition in Urdu also. The magazine continued till 1939. 42nd chapter is focused on Kirti in various states in local language names. Chapters 43rd to 45th are focused on Indian National Army or Azad Hind Fauj, formed first by General Mohan Singh, associated with Ras Behari Bose in Japan. Mohan Singh resisted Japanese control and was removed, he wanted its command to ne given to Netaji Subhas Bose, which was given later, when he was jailed in Japan. A list of 900 plus more martyrs of INA is also given in chapter 45th. The last chapter gives reasons for failure of revolutionary or Ghadar movement in India. This again reverts to Ghadar party alone.
The book does not have Navy revolt as last chapter. Other chapters of the book also don’t synchronise. It seems writer had collected all his articles published from time to time and put in one large volume. The strong parts of the book are in form of data of names given of Jallianwala, Ghadar Pary and INA.
11. Rose H S/Raj Bhoj, Panjabi de Vikas di Adhi sadi da Sach (Punjabi), Patiala, Twenty First century Publications, Pages 136
Harjinder Rose is a scientist and Bhoj Raj a linguist, both had been associated with Punjabi University Patiala, which was set up in 1962 to develop Panjabi language in order to make it capable of medium of instruction in higher education in every subject including science. This small book examines the efforts made by the University to develop science in Punjabi language. It is critical look at its efforts. Book is dedicated to ex vice chancellors of the University-Kirpal Singh Narang and Dr. Amrik Singh. There are 12 chapters including conclusion in the book. The book has discussed the need of developing Punjabi language by creating terminology and books on science subjects directly written in Punjabi and not translation or adaption. Book enlists many books written on science subjects by university faculty and examines in detail books written by one of the senior most Professor-Surjit Singh Dhillon who joined Zoology department of the University earlier and remained its head from 1968 till 1992. He was trained as Zoologist at AMU Aligarh and was overwhelmed by the Urdu poetry culture prevalent in AMU, which he uses liberally even in his science books! He had many books written in Punjabi on science subject, mainly Zoology. The two scholars find more flaws in his science books than the qualities. As per these scholars these books don’t qualify on basic science principles of explaining science in simple terms. The liberal use of Urdu poetry and literary style does not go well with basic science books, this is the crux of critical analysis of the scholars. It would have been better to take one or two more author’s books and shown in contrast how a good science book is written in Punjabi. The book was probably published during Dr. Surjit Dhillon’s life time, as the year of publication is not mentioned on the inner flap, but his response is not known and since he is no more, his response can not be known. All three-Dr. Dhillon, Dr. Rose and Dr. Bhoj Raj, had been my colleagues in Punjabi University Patiala at one time. In fact, I was also not aware of so many science text books written in Punjabi, though I was and still am a regular visitor of Publication bureau of the University. Perhaps I always overlooked science and many other subjects’ books from catalogue and saw only literature or social science books, that is how I remained uninformed of these books. Writers have a valid criticism about Vice Chancellors writing foreword to all publications of all subjects and appreciating without even reading the books. They simply sign what is written by Publication in charge officials or academics. The practice of Department of Punjabi Development head writing the prefaces of these books is equally unnecessary, as they have to praise their publication whether it deserved praise or not. Only writer’s preface or foreword should be there and the writer should be responsible for the quality of the book.
If such critical books are published more in numbers, the quality of university publications can improve.
April 2022
Earnest Jones, the British Socialist poet said in his long poem-The Revolt of Hindostan’ that ‘On its colonies the sun never sets, but the blood never dries’
John Newsinger, a British historian with left orientation gave the title of his 2006 published book-‘The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of British Empire’ Its second and updated edition came out in year 2013, in which the writer added new material. The book is dedicated to writers’ old comrades from Leicester- Chris Lymn, Mal Deakin, Andy Wynne, Jim Tolton, John Peach and the late Ken Orrill.
The book covers the history of British colonial oppression and exploitation in different regions of the world, as the British had colonised nearly a hundred countries in Asia, Africa and some other regions in the world, it was the biggest coloniser in human history and is still holding many colonies under its rule, like Falklands in Argentina. The author’s main focus is not on many countries, but on the major freedom struggles and British colonial cruelties to crush those anti colonial resistance movements. Indian resistance figures twice in the book, first as The Great Indian Rebellion, 1857-58 and then as Quit India movement. In between in another chapter it refers to Jallianwala Bagh like massacres. The first chapter of the book begins with The Jamaican Rebellion and the overthrow of slavery.
There are chapters on Ireland, The Irish famine, Opium Wars, Egypt, The Suez Canal, Palestine Question, Mau Mau Movement in Kenya, Malaya and Far East. Finally British colonial empire gives up before American empire, as the neo colonial regime of American empire begins. In 2013 edition of the book a chapter on Iraq invasion by USA takes readers to the reality of merging of colonial and neo colonial systems of oppression and exploitation of world’s largest population, the fruits of this exploitation are enjoyed by a miniscule number of colonial and neo colonial rulers and their patronised corporates of the world, which perhaps has grown much worse during the continuing pandemic of Covid-19!
In the introduction to first edition of the book the author underlines the fact that ‘a close look at British imperial rule reveals episodes as brutal and shameful as in the history of any empire, indeed the British colonial regime suppressed the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950’s’! We in India remember the brutalities committed in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13th April 1919 and few months around, but if one compares it with the British suppression of Mau Mau rebellion, three decades later in Kenya, the Jallianwala Bagh brutalities look much lesser than what the British did three decades later, despite so many international organisations like UNO, Human Rights organisations, coming up after World War II. Author Newsinger while referring to another author N Ferguson book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, published in 2003, an apologist of British imperialism, in whose book-The Mau Mau revolt does not find even a mention, but in Newsinger;s words-‘The Mau Mau revolt of the 1950’s was put down with terrible brutality, the routine use of torture, the summary executions, internment on a massive scale and the hanging of over 1000 prisoners.’
Newsinger not only narrates the history of oppression and brutalities of British colonialism, he goes to the roots of exploitation. ‘Imperialism has two dimensions; firstly, the competition between the great imperial powers, competition that in the 20th century produced two world wars and the Cold war. This competition is the driving force of modern imperialism, and it has wreaked terrible damage on the world, consuming millions of lives.’
Probably one can understand the present conditions of Ukraine war and the resulting Cold war from Newsinger interpretation of imperial competition. In his introduction the author refers to few films on repression on South African people, but also underlines the role of radicals and socialists in Britain who supported the resistance movements in colonies. He underlines that the British anti-imperialists stand in the tradition of poet Earnest Jones and another fierce critic of the empire, radical socialist William Morris. In this context author does not spare the so-called progressive party of Britain Labour party, which was no different from Tories and conservatives in defending the colonial empire. John Newsinger is unsparing of New Labour party with the rise of Tony Blaire, in playing a subordinate to US imperialism. The author has the humility to say that his study is not the history of British colonial empire, but it just focuses on particular episodes, but these episodes expose the real and brutal face of old colonialism and neo imperialism.
In 2013 updated edition, like in first edition, Newsinger challenges another apologist of colonial empires. Here he challenges John Darwin, Oxford University’s Professor of history, whose book-Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain, published in 2012,he scrutinised critically like earlier book of N Ferguson. He questions Darwin that how casually he has referred to the catastrophe of Bengal Famine of 1943 in his book of 400+ pages? Darwin just gives a passing reference on page 346 that ‘the Bengal famine of 1943 may have killed two million people’! Author here favourably refers to Madhusree Mukherjee’s book-Churchills’ Secret War’ which powerfully exposes the British colonial regime during the famine, which as per Mukhrejee had killed 3.5 to five million people, while Churchill used to say ‘Indians are used to hunger.’
This edition has taken into account British role in Iraq and Afghanistan and also updated Mau Mau movement’s brutalities. Author has referred to previously hidden 294 boxes of 1500 files of Mau Mau movement, which was under legal scrutiny, whose judgement came later than 2013 edition of the book was published. British colonial regime had to pay huge compensation of 19.9 million pounds to descendants of 5000 Kenyan victims as compensation to Mau Mau brutalities committed in 1950. Whereas in Jallianwala Bagh massacres Britishers got absolved by paying few lakh rupees to victims, to many victims as low as just five hundred rupees.
A new chapter is added to Iraq and Afghanistan as Afterwards to 2013 edition. The first chapter on Jamaica takes us back to the days of slavery, where in Antigua, the Caribbean Island, where less than 3000 whites were holding more than 24000 blacks as slaves and first conspiracy to rebel was discovered in 1736. British empire in the Caribbean was bult on the production of sugar on plantations, worked by black slaves brought from Africa, later Indians went there as semi slaves, after the abolition of slavery as system. In Jamaica, five lakh slaves were taken from Africa between 1700 and 1774. During 180 years of slavery in Jamaica, hardly any decade went without revolt against slavery. In neighbouring Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana, situation was no different, there were markets where slaves were brought in chains and sold like cattle. After the killings of thousands and revolts slavery finally was ended in 1834. The author has given details of resistance and took it until 1867 reform act was implemented.
The second chapter title is The Irish Famine, but it is saga or Irish revolutionary resistance to British empire, which had inspired Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries in India as well. The story begins with 1798 full scale rebellion against British rule over Ireland. The Irish famine or Great Hunger happened during 1830-40, when the staple food of Ireland’s potato crop was destroyed up to 40%. The effects of famine continued till 1850. But the story of Irish struggle for freedom, conflict between Catholics and Protestants is also woven in the story of famine. The struggle of Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had impacted Indian revolutionaries is described till 1916 Easter rising. Later Ireland is split in two parts. One part is now independent Republic of Ireland, whereas Northern Ireland continues to be uneasy part of United Kingdom and IRA or Sinn Fein getting into power in 2022 elections for the first time.
Third chapter Opium Wars deal with wars with China due to opium trade. British traders were earning from opium smuggling which China was trying to control. First opium war took place in 1840’s with Manchu empire of China. Britain despite a smaller country had won the war, but the conflict continued. Taiping rebellion in 1853, fall of Nanjing regime, in all three opium wars took place between China and Britain. Britain succeeded in occupying Hong Cong during these wars, which it kept colonised till 1997 agreement of quitting it, but still keeps interfering even after 25 years of decolonising it. As per author, Britain influence was over by 1930, but it kept. Hong Cong Island occupied till 1997.
India comes into picture in next chapter with the apt title of- The Great Indian Rebellion 1857-58.The chapter begins with a quote from Michael Edwardes-‘the English threw aside the mask of civilization and engaged in a war on such ferocity that a reasonable parallel can be seen in our times with the Nazi occupation of Europe’
A very strong statement by a historian of repute, though author Newsinger does not completely agree with this, yet finds comparison to be true in some respects at least in the methods adopted by Nazi occupants of Europe and British colonialists. . As he quotes a memoir of one Thomas Lowe in his book Central India During The Rebellion of 1857 and 58. Newsinger narrates the bloody wars of aggression by Britishers since 19th century, referring to 1824-26 invasion of Burma, 1839-42 disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, 1843 occupation of Sindh, 1844 occupation of Gwalior, 1844-45 first Anglo-Sikh war, followed by two more wars to conquest Punjab in 1849. Under the policy of ‘lapse’, ruling feudal dyeing without direct progeny, Dalhousie annexed five states=Satara, Nagpur, Jhansi, Tanjore and lastly Awadh in 1856. Dalhousie proudly proclaimed that British queen had added fifty lakh people and 12 lakh pounds to the empire. During East India company by 1818 collected 22 lakh pounds from land taxes surpassing earnings from trade, which was its basic purpose. The author quotes from Karl Marx’s 1853 article on India, that Britain achieved its one purpose of destroying India. The tortures of British empire during 1857-58 figure in British Parliament, but were hidden by historians of the raj. While colonialists were defending all atrocities on Indians, Karl Marx underlined that-Mussulmans and Hindus renouncing their mutual antipathies, have combined against their common masters’, he further noted that ‘revolt was part of general disaffection against English supremacy on the part of great Asiatic nations’ (Quoted from First war of Independence by Marx)
Newsinger also mentions that how V D Savarkar’s book The Indian war of Independence 1857 was published in 1909 and banned quickly in India but it appeared on Indian bookstalls wrapped in cover labelled as ‘Random Papers of Pickwick Club’! (The author has given the source of this information from a 1931 book by Mac Munn). This book was secretly printed and distributed by Indian revolutionaries also. The author narrates the details of the great rebellion, but in England, it is remembered more as Cawnpore massacres. At Sati Chaura ghat in Kanpur large number of Britishers including women were massacred by Indian sepoys, this has given rise to many different narrations. Bhairav Prasad Gupt, a Hindi novelist wrote a huge novel titled Sati Maiya Ka Chaura. Rudrangshu Mukherjee in Specter of Violence has tried to contextualize this massacre at Bibighar. But compared to what Britishers did to Indians during 1857-58, it looks as minor but violent reaction to colonial atrocities. As it happened at Chauri Chaura in 1922 during Mahatma Gandhi called Satyagraha, due to police atrocities on peaceful people. The exact number of killings during 1857-58 are never known, but these runs into lakhs as no official records have been made. Newsinger had given large details of British cruelties including 282 sepoys choked to death at Ajnala in Punjab by the orders of Deputy Commissioner Cooper, the remains of which were found during last decade. The Britishers were generally against Indian resistance as large number of pro-British accounts were written during and after the revolt. But there was support for Indian resistance too, as poet Earnest Jones wrote the epical poem-The Revolt of Hindostan, from which the title of this book is taken.
Some unknown or lesser known facts about the great rebellion mentioned by Newsinger, include even Charles Dickens the beloved writer of most of liberal and aesthetes of realism, defended British cruelties on Indians by saying that-‘to exterminate the race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested…to blot it out of mankind and raze if off the face of the earth,’(Page 89 of 2013 edition) On the other hand Marx daughter Jenny supported Earnest Jones by siding with the revolt of Indians. The whole chapter of the book needs to be read carefully to see the real face of colonial mindset.
There is a chapter on invasion of Egypt in 1882 and the glorious struggle of Egyptians for Egypt for Egyptians
India comes to be mentioned in the book in another full chapter Quit India, but before that in the chapter-The Post war Crisis-1916-26, along with Irish Struggle and Egyptian revolt, there is narration with reference to Jallianwala Bagh massacre and General Dyer’s crimes in the sub chapter-Holding India by the sword. Before referring to Jallianwala Bagh, the working-class textile workers struggle in Ahmadabad and Bombay are mentioned and after Jallianwala, the noncooperation movement led by Gandhi is also finds mention.
Very few books refer to The Palestinians sufferings due to imperial designs, but Newsinger brings to fore the whole issue of Palestine with perspective on Zionism and imperialism in one full chapter of the book.
In chapter Quit India, the author focusses upon Gandhi’s non cooperation movement, besides referring to Sholapur workers strike and other developments during long freedom struggle of India. This chapter makes reference to Simon Commission, Lala Lajpat Rai, Congress Socialist party(CSP), CPI, before moving towards launching of Quit India. It narrates in detail the various incidents during Quit India and the glorious resistance by Indian people. This chapter also underlines the greatest disaster befalling India in the form of Bengal famine of 1943 and Churchill’s racist response to it. The chapter completes the story of Indian independence going through the Indian National Army led by Netaji Subhash Bose and Royal Indian Navy revolt of 1946, which finally forced Britain to really Quit India on 15th August 1957.
Later chapters include the Suez Canal crisis and British defeat and the crushing the Mau Mau movement in Kenya most brutally in great detail. There is mention of Southern Rhodesia, Indonesian killings of communists, Vietnamese war, Britain joining American imperialist camp, new labor under Tony Blair, who joined US imperialists in attacking Iraq. Before concluding the book, a chapter is added as Afterwards to second edition describing the hypocrisy and lies of so called weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to attack Iraq and execute publically its elected President Saddam Hussain.
This is one of the books, which every nationalist or patriot of any country should read to understand the role of colonial and imperialist oppression and exploitation of the world people, unfortunately, which continues unabated even today. The world seems to be moving towards more imperialist wars with fascist tendencies again emerging in many countries including India. How to save world from falling into barbaric trap of fascist destruction, when there is no sight of its only alternative-socialism in sight as Rosa Luxemburg visualized? Is world doomed towards going through the barbarism or something miraculous could happen? There is a weak ray of light from Latin American countries and bleak hope in farmers movement in India. How to strengthen these hopeful signs to save humanity, is the biggest challenge before humanity and question for philosophers!
13. Andreyev, Leonid, Seven that were Hanged, (Novella) first publication in Russian in 1891, many English translations, pages 80+
This is one of favourite books of Bhagat Singh and his fellow revolutionaries. In many memoirs regarding the revolutionaries, the reference of this book comes among few favourite books read and discussed by revolutionaries. The writer of this novella was Russian writer Leonid Andreyev, who was a friend of Maxim Gorki, who encouraged him to concentrate on writing as he noticed his story published in 1898. Andreyev born in 1871was working as police court reporter then. Later he turned out to be a celebrity as play wright. His most famous play was He Who Gets Slapped, out of 25 plays he wrote. During 1905 Russian Revolution, he defended democratic values. He also welcomed February1917 Russian democratic revolution, but was not comfortable with Bolshevik October revolution later that year. He shifted to neighbourly country Finland, where he died in 1919.
Apart from plays, he wrote fiction also and his 1908 novella Seven that were Hanged is also considered among his major works. This novella has many translations in English, first was in 1909 by Herman Bernstein, another by Thomas Seltzer in 1925, the latest one was in 2016 by Anthony Briggs. It was adapted into a play as well as a film.
Andreyev wrote a brief introduction to its first English translation –‘Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.’ He mentions about the Russian state attitude to literature in those days-
‘I have treated ruling and slaughtering Russia with restraint and
mildness may best be gathered from the fact that the Russian censor
has permitted my book to circulate. This is sufficient evidence when
we recall how many books, brochures and newspapers have found eternal
rest in the peaceful shade of the police stations, where they have
risen to the patient sky in the smoke and flame of bonfires.’ But the purpose of this novella is to question death penalty or capital punishment, which is relevant even today. The novelist says-
‘My task was to point out the horror and the iniquity of capital
punishment under any circumstances. The horror of capital punishment
is great when it falls to the lot of courageous and honest people
whose only guilt is their excess of love and the sense of
righteousness-in such instances, conscience revolts. But the rope is
still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak
and ignorant people.’
As the novella is story of execution of five revolutionaries and two ordinary criminals, author’s sympathy lies more with the ordinary murderers, because the author opines those revolutionaries with their strong will and purity of ideas can face death boldly, but same can turn ordinary criminals to insanity!
73-page novella is divided into 11 small chapters and begins with first chapter under the title-At One O’ clock, Your Excellency! The czarist minister is reported by chief of his guards that exactly at one o’ clock next afternoon, revolutionaries will attack him. The minister is surprised at this information, as he himself had come to know this just hours before. And the narration of the whole awake night of minister is imagination of his fears and anxieties depicted psychologically. The story moves to second chapter-Condemned to be Hanged with the arrest of four revolutionaries at the gate of minister as the information was correct and police had taken advance steps to foil the revolutionaries’ plans. While three men and a woman were arrested with bombs and weapons at the gate, another woman was arrested from the place, where conspiracy was hatched to kill the minister. They all were very young; the eldest man was 28 years old and the youngest woman was nineteen only. The trial was held swiftly in the fortress, they were imprisoned and they were condemned to death. They were calm, very serious and thoughtful. Their contempt for the judges was so intense during the trial, that not even feigned any cheerfulness or gave a smile. Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries conduct during their trials was perhaps impacted by their readings of such novels.
Sergey Golovin, son of an ex-officer was the main character among revolutionaries. The young pale girl known only by the name Musya was among two women. Tanya Kovalchuk was another woman as motherly figure, ready to sacrifice her life for others. Werner was bitterest of all and Vasily Kashirin most terrified of death.
The two other prisoners condemned to death were-Ivan Yansen, a farm hand, who had killed his master and tried to rape his daughter and Tsiganok Golubets, a Russian bandit, a Tatarian, proud of his acts with murder of three persons this time and jovial about the sentence.
One chapter each is given to describe the mental state all seven are going through. Golovin and Tanya are not afraid of death and they try to help others to come to terms with the sentence. Musya also tries to provide succor to other criminals sentenced to death. Most pitiable condition is of Yansen, who till end, while being led to gallows is begging to be allowed to live. Golovin’s father prepares his wife not to show any emotion of sorrow or fear before his son and keeps his and his own and his son’s pride intact, while meeting him in prison. Women even kiss ordinary non-political criminals to give them a sense of human warmth. Sergey keeps exercising to keep fitness all through. There is lot pf philosophizing and psychological state of mind of characters and in final 11th chapter-They all seven are –On the way to Scaffold’
They are taken in vehicles to far off location of gallows in a snow filled region and they are asked to walk in twos, holding hands and everyone’s state of mind is depicted by the author in somewhat dramatic manner.
The novella ends with this last paragraph-
‘The sun was rising over the sea.
The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With
stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues,
looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which
were covered with bloody foam-the bodies were hurried back along the
same road by which they had come-alive. And the spring snow was just
as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And
on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled underfoot.
Thus, did men greet the rising sun.’
Bhagat Singh and his revolutionaries’ comrades had read such literature to strengthen their resolve to face the death bravely but author had written to underline the futility of capital punishment, which colonial and oppressive rulers like Russian Czar could never understand, nor they understand today after more than hundred years of publication of such humanist literature.
Mahatma Gandhi and all other pacifist activists and philosophers have been against capital punishment. The mutual killings by human beings are not a new phenomenon. From the onset of human civilization, which has grown out of Darwinian theory of evolution, no living being other than humans, kills other beings, even the most feared ones-snakes, lions etc for the sake of killings, it is to satisfy their hunger that the stronger animals kill weaker animals. In earlier phase of human civilization, the human race was doing the same, though mostly killing animals to eat. This is also true that during wars many times, human beings had eaten even human flash. Some cruel colonial masters had also forced prisoners to eat human flesh. It is with the development of civilization and culture, that human societies have organized themselves on certain ‘social contract’ created out such concepts like democracy etc. Even today, in many Arabian countries ‘blood money’ is an accepted form of justice for murder! There are more than one hundred countries in the world, who have done away with capital punishment, India is not one among these, yet some form of demand and urgency exists in India too for this. Ironically, whatever ideas of Mahatma Gandhi are publicized in India and abroad, his opposition to capital punishment as one of his principles are not given much importance. In case of defending Bhagat Singh and revolutionaries from execution, Mahatma Gandhi did whatever he could, but ironically, he did not emphasize upon his own basic principle of being against capital punishment. Had he done so, he would not have been subjected to such scrutiny as he is now in context of revolutionaries’ execution. There are two extremes existing in the world at present. On one side, there are blood seekers of religious fundamentalists variety, who want to lynch anyone who speaks against their professed religion, India has lately fallen among such nations. Another perspective is of treating even the worst criminal of humanity like Andres Breivik in Norway who killed more than seventy kids playing in a park. But the Norwegian people despite this most brutal Nazi kind of crime, did not make cat calls for his lynching or fansi do, fansi do. Stable societies treat such crimes as abrasions’ and not as normal. Even as Sweden Prime Minister Olof Palme was killed in a theatre while watching film with his wife like any other citizen without security, Swedish society did not resort to kind of Indian society has resorted to making any petty politician provided with terrifying police security in such visible and annoying form. Otherwise also in jurisprudence, there are theories of retribution and deterrence as opposed to this are reformative and rehabilitative theories. Bhagat Singh in his jail notebook had taken detailed notes of these theories, he was like other humanist philosophers of the world, in favour of reformative and rehabilitative justice system and they considered British colonial system to be retributive jurisprudence, which it proved in their or in any other colonized country’s case.
Seven that were Hanged reminds human society again the relevance of raising issue of building a society, where there is no capital punishment, as in the roots of any crime, is the form of social set up which is exploitative and oppressive. To counter it, the task of society is to build a system, which is based on equality, fraternity and justice, a far looking dream today despite many social revolutions like French and socialist revolutions in many countries during twentieth century!
May 2022
14. Hugo, Victor, Ninety-Three, a novel, first French original edition 1874
- Bhagat Singh was a voracious reader of books and the variety of books he read varied from Political economy to literature. Though Victor Hugo is a hugely known, rather a classic writer of 19th century, but he is known more for his novel Les Misérables. Victor Hugo, who lived a rich and tumultuous life of 83 years, is considered one of the most respected writers of not only France, but of Europe as a whole. Nineteenth century was a century of enlightenment in Europe after French revolution of 1793, giving rise to the slogan of Equality, Fraternity and Liberty, which later became part of French constitution and even UNO motto.
- Bhagat Singh had read Les Misérables also, but on this novel Ninety-Three, he and Sukhdev had discussions. Along with Leonid Andreyev novel Seven that were Hanged their personalities as revolutionaries were shaped to some extent on the lives of revolutionaries in these two novels in France and Russia, at least these novels had left deep impression on them.
- For France, Victor Hugo as a writer, was one of the greatest. France gives more respect to its writers than its political leaders. As once one of most powerful President of France Charles de Gaulle had famously said about Jean Paul Sartre that Sartre is France and I can not arrest France. That time Sartre had come on roads to support France’s rebellious students in 1968. Victor Hugo wrote much in terms of quantity, but is known for quality of his works as well. Apart from ten books of fiction, he wrote more than fifty more books, which include poetry, plays, prose and political writings. His other famous novel is Hunchback of the Notre Dame. Very few personalities of the world have got so much space on Wikipedia, as Victor Hugo has got. Victor Hugo is considered as foremost writer of Romantic movement in literature.
- Ninety-Three was his last writing published in 1874 at the age of 72 years. He died in 1885 at the age of 83 years. Victor Hugo was not only a writer; he was active in political life of France and took part in its revolutionary activities as well. Hugo had become member of prestigious French Academy of Letters of France in 1841 and entered Upper Chamber of Parliament in 1845, nominated by then King. Later he was elected to Second Republic’s National Assembly like lower chamber in 1848, as a conservative. He broke from Conservatives in 1849 and became votary of abolition of death sentence. He spoke in favour of ending misery of the poor people and for universal suffrage. He was also in favour of free education for all children. In 1851, when Napoleon III seized the power, Hugo went into exile in 1855 and returned to France in 1870 only, after Napoleon III was deposed. Although like Charles Dickens in England, Victor Hugo also initially supported French colonialism of Africa as ‘civilizing mission’. But later he became strong votary of abolishing slavery in the Caribbean and also of decolonising Africa. He famously said in 1862-‘Only one slave on Earth is enough to dishonor the freedom of all men. So, the abolition of slavery is, at this hour, the supreme goal of the thinkers’
— Victor Hugo, 17 January 1862
- During Paris Commune in France from 18th March 1871 to 27th May, he was in Brussels, he was critical of atrocities on ‘both sides.’ He freed himself from the impact of religion and declared himself to be Free Thinker, in the tradition of Voltaire, a progressive trend in those times. His rationalism had offended some people and he had faced slogans like Burn Hugo. Despite his many contradictions, he had become a hero for France by 1870, he had remained member of National Assembly again and when he died, France mourned his death as a national hero. In many cities of France, lanes or areas are named after him.
- Interesting part of his last novel Ninety-Three is that on one side ‘Reds’ like Joseph Stalin and Bhagat Singh had read and appreciated it. On the other side ‘Whites’ like iconic novelist of individualism Ayan Rand also admired this novel and even wrote an introduction to one of its English translations.
- The novel was written on 1793 French revolution but in the shadow of Paris Commune of 1871, as the novel was published in 1874. It is long novel of nearly 350 pages and not very simple narration or storytelling. Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-treize) is the last novel by Victor Hugo. The novel concerns the Revolt in the Vendée and Chouannerie – the counter-revolutionary revolts in 1793 during the French Revolution. It is divided into three parts, but not connected chronologically; each part tells a different story, offering a different view of historical general events. The action mainly takes place in Brittany and in Paris. The civil war in France had started in November 1792 and the murders which started were so terrible that they raised one’s hair on head. A troop of “Blues” (soldiers of the French Republic) encounter in the bocage Michelle Fléchard, a peasant woman, and her three young children, who are fleeing from the conflict. She explains that her husband and parents have been killed in the peasant revolt that started the insurrection. The troop’s commander, Sergeant Radoub, convinces them to look after the family.
- Meanwhile, at sea, a group of Royalist “Whites” are planning to land the Marquis de Lantenac, a Breton aristocrat whose leadership could transform the fortunes of the rebellion. While at sea, a sailor fails to properly secure his cannon, which rolls out of control and damages the ship. The sailor risks his life to secure the cannon and save their ship. Lantenac awards the man a medal for his bravery and then executes him (without trial) for failing in his duty. Their corvette is spotted by ships of the Republic. Lantenac slips away in a boat with one supporter, Halmalo, the brother of the executed sailor, and the corvette distracts the Republican ships by provoking a battle the damaged ship cannot win.
- Lantenac is hunted by the Blues, but is protected by a local beggar, to whom he gave alms in the past. He meets up with his supporters, and they immediately launch an attack on the Blues. Part of the troop with the family is captured. Lantenac orders them all to be shot, including Michelle. He takes the children with him as hostages. The beggar finds the bodies, and discovers that Michelle is still alive. He nurses her back to health.
- antenac’s ruthless methods have turned the revolt into a major threat to the Republic. In Paris, Danton, Robespierre and Marat argue about the threat, while also sniping at each other. They promulgate a decree that all rebels and anyone who helps them will be executed. Cimourdain, a committed revolutionary and former priest, is deputed to carry out their orders in Brittany. He is also told to keep an eye on Gauvain, the commander of the Republican troops there, who is related to Lantenac and thought to be too lenient to rebels. Unknown to the revolutionary leaders, Cimourdain was Gauvain’s childhood tutor, and thinks of him as a son.
- Meanwhile, Michelle has recovered and goes in search of her children. She wanders aimlessly, but eventually hears that they are being held hostage in Lantenac’s castle. At the castle Sergeant Radoub, fighting with the besiegers, spots the children. He persuades Gauvain to let him lead an assault. He manages to break through the defences and kill several rebels, but with Halmalo’s aid, Lantenac and a few survivors escape through a secret passage after setting fire to the building. As the fire takes hold, Michelle arrives, and sees that her children are trapped. Her hysterical cries of despair are heard by Lantenac. Struck with guilt, he returns through the passage to the castle and rescues the children, helped by Radoub. He then gives himself up. Lantenac, who throughout had been most ruthless and without any sense of humanity in him, shows a kind of some human kindness for children, whom he had kept as hostages, makes revolutionary Gauvain a bit soft towards him. Lantenac fate was certain, he was going to be guillotined after a trial chaired by former priest Cimourdain. Gauvain out of his idealist humanism, releases Lantenac and takes his place in prison by changing clothes with him. Next morning at the time of trial, instead of Lantenac, it is their own revolutionary comrade Gauvain, who faces trial, which creates consternation among the jury. Radaub is part of jury headed by Cimourdain, who treats Gauvain as his son, as he had tutored him as a child. Out of three member judges panel Radaub acquits Gauvain seeing his past sincere and unfailing revolutionary record. Cimourdin sides with other judge to convict Gauvain and before Gauvain has to guillotined next morning, goes and meets him in prison during his last night. Next morning Gauvain is guillotined and at the same time a shot is heard, Cimourdined had shot himself with pistol. The novel ends there.
- Joseph Stalin had read the novel during his seminary in Georgia and was deeply impacted by the character of Cimourdin. Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev had discussion on this novel. Sukhdev had no sympathy for Cimourdin committing suicide, he was against the very idea of suicide as a revolutionary. However, after being arrested and in jail, Sukhdev himself thought of suicide instead of spending whole life behind jail walls. Sukhdev could not sustain long hunger strike as Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt and many other comrades had observed. The two letters exchange between Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev, one outside jail and second inside jail throws light on the philosophical attitude towards the concepts of Love and Suicide. Bhagat Singh was quite harsh in criticism of Sukhdev about the idea of committing suicide and he tells him clearly that inside and outside jail, both had changed positions. Bhagat Singh argued that revolutionaries had to remain prepared for long sufferings inside and outside jail without ever thinking of suicide, though Bhagat Singh like Stalin understood Cimourdin’s dilemma, who could perform his duty as revolutionary to get his son convicted and guillotined, but then out of paternal emotions shot himself dead.
- This novel had influenced a lot those Indian revolutionaries, who were fond of and read literature, like the other revolutionaries of the world. Though not much discussed as literary classic, yet ninety-three stands apart among its readership of revolutionaries across the world. That keeps the novel’s socio-political relevance live even after nearly 150 years after its publication!
June
15. Fanon Frantz, Black Skins White Masks. London, Pluto Press, 2008 edition, Pages 186
Frantz Fanon is one of the foremost revolutionary thinkers from Africa and the Caribbean. He was born in Martinique, still under French control, but remained active part of revolutionary liberation struggle against French colonialism. Professionally he was a trained Doctor in Psychiatry and wrote a doctoral thesis in France on the subject. He was son of an African origin father and an Afro-Martinican white origin mother. During his schooling in Martinique, he came under influence of his teacher, French poet and writer Aime Cesair. Born in 1925, Fanon lived for just 36 years, dyeing in 1961. He left Martinique at the age of 18 years and had his higher education at University of Lyons in France. He was influenced by Marxism. While studying medicine and psychiatry at University of Lyons, he also attended lectures on literature, drama and philosophy lectures of French philosopher Merleau Ponty. While studying he wrote three plays, of which two survive. He joined FLN-The anti-colonial Algerian liberation front, fighting against French colonialism. He practised as psychiatrist and from his experiences wrote his first book at the age of 27 years, in 1952-Black Skin White Masks. It was his doctoral thesis, but he submitted doctoral thesis with some variation and published this as a book. He was detected as suffering from leukaemia, yet he continued working and just before his death, his most famous work-The Wretched of the Earth was published with an introduction by Jean Paul Sartre. Fanon was impressed by Sartre’s support to Algerian liberation war. Frantz Fanon served as Ambassador to Ghana of provisional Government of Algeria and on its behalf attended many conferences in African countries. In 1959, his book-The Dyeing Colonialism was published and in 1961, his magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth was published. Two collections of his shorter writings were published posthumously- Towards and African Revolution in 1964 and Alienation and Freedom in 2018.
All of his books have been published in English translation. Black Skin White Masks, its first publication at is considered very important book and two post-modernist thinkers-One Indian Homi J Bhabha and Ziauddin Sardar, writing forewords to its 2008 edition. Its English translation has been done by Charles Lam Markmaan in 1967 and was published by Groove Press. Homi J Bhabha wrote his foreword in 1986 edition and Sardar in 2008 edition by Pluto Press London. Apart from two forewords, which are spread in 38 pages and a brief translator’s note, the book is divided into Introduction by author and eight chapters with Index added.
Ziauddin Sardar in his foreword explains the theme of the book as- ‘It is the anger of all whose cultures, knowledge systems and ways of being that are ridiculed, demonized, declared inferior and irrational, and, in some cases, eliminated.’(Page vi)
He further adds that while fighting against Nazi Germany from Free France side, serving in the military, Fanon experienced
racism on a daily basis. In France, he noticed that French women
avoided black soldiers who were sacrificing their lives to liberate
them. He was wounded; and was awarded the Croix de Guerre
for bravery during his service in the Free French forces.’ After the war against Nazi Germany was over, Fanon won a scholarship to study medicine and psychiatry at Lyon. After completing his doctorate, when, in 1953, he was offered a job as head of the psychiatric department of Bilda- Joinville Hospital in Algiers he jumped at the opportunity. In Algeria a full-blown liberation struggle was going on and Fanon joined the National Liberation Front (FLN), after leaving the job in 1956. The French response was brutal. Sardar writes with sorrow that Fanon did not live to see Algeria gain full independence. While in Ghana, he was diagnosed with leukemia. He was taken to USA for treatment, but he died there in Washington on 6th December 1961. Yet his most influential work with introduction by Sartre-The Wretched of the Earth was published before his death, which became an inspiration for black movement throughout the world. US Black Power or Black Panthers movement was influenced by Fanon’s classic book. As per Sardar- ‘Black Skin, White Masks was the first book to investigate
the psychology of colonialism. It examines how colonialism
is internalized by the colonized, how an inferiority complex is
inculcated, and how, through the mechanism of racism, black
people end up emulating their oppressors.’ Sardar also quotes Indian scholar Ashish Nandy in support of his argument. Kenyan writer/scholar Ngugi WaThiongo’ s book-‘Decolonizing the Mind’ was also influenced by Black skin White Masks.
In his long Foreword in earlier 1986 edition, Indian scholar Homi J Bhabha introduces the post-modernist interpretation of Black Skin White Masks becomes more tedious to read than even the book, which has a complex subject, but can be understood better without the post-modernist two forewords. Homi Bhabha writes in his foreword- ‘Whenever questions of race and sexuality make their own organizational and theoretical demands on the primacy of “class,” “state” and “party” the language of traditional socialism is quick to describe those urgent, “other” questions as symptoms of petty-bourgeois deviation, signs of the bad faith of socialist intellectuals. The ritual respect accorded to the name of Fanon, the currency of his titles in the common language of liberation, are part of the ceremony of a polite, English refusal.’(xxi)
Bhabha further says- ‘Fanon attempts such audacious, often impossible, transformations of truth and value, the jagged testimony of colonial dislocation, its displacement of time and person, its defilement of culture and territory, refuses the ambition of any “total” theory of colonial oppression.’(Page xxiv)
Moving straight to the book book, Frantz Fanon in his short introduction begins with a quote from his beloved teacher – ‘I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement.’
—Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le Colonialisme
Unlike his scientific subject, Fanon begins in a bit emotional poetic introduction as he explains the reason for writing this book-
‘Why write this book? No one has asked me for it.
Especially those to whom it is directed.
Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in
this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.
Toward a new humanism. . . .
Understanding among men. . . .
Our colored brothers. . . .
Mankind, I believe in you. . . .
Race prejudice. . . .
To understand and to love. . . .’
In an anguished tone at young age of 25+, he further poses the questions-
‘What does a man want?
What does the black man want?
At the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers,
I will say that the black is not a man.’
The task of the author, who is professional psychiatrist is to explain Black-White relations, he says-
‘The white man is sealed in his whiteness.
The black man in his blackness.
We shall seek to ascertain the directions of this dual narcissism
and the motivations that inspire it.’
From his experiences in treating patients author get the raw data, which is problematic-
‘There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to
black men.
There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men,
at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their
intellect.
How do we extricate ourselves?
A moment ago, I spoke of narcissism. Indeed, I believe that only
a psychoanalytical interpretation of the black problem can lay
bare the anomalies of affect that are responsible for the structure
of the complex.’
One can see that author is better able to explain the complexity of his subject than his post-modernist interpreters, who by their theoretical jargon, make the book look more complex than it actually is. Author explains the theme of the book rather clearly when he says-
‘This book is a clinical study. Those who recognize themselves
in it, I think, will have made a step forward. I seriously hope to
persuade my brother, whether black or white, to tear off with
all his strength the shameful livery put together by centuries of
incomprehension.’
Fanon goes on to describe the chapterisation of the book like a researcher. In fact, the book initially was supposed to be Fanon’s doctoral thesis, which later he changed it in a book format, while submitting thesis in different format. First three chapters concept and features of Negro and later chapters take up some case studies. So, he begins first chapter as The Negro and Language. Unconsciously or subconsciously, Negroes are natives of any colonized country in Asia or Africa, while fighting the colonial masters and getting rid of them, they try to acquire the competence in colonial master’s language imposed upon them in administration or through education system. While Fanon has discussed this trend in context of Africa and Negroes, which were colonized more by French and established hegemony of French language in the colonies. But same is true of British owned colonies. As Fanon talks about Algerian or Martinican negroes getting mentally enslaved by French, so has Kenyan writer, a colony of British empire, Ngũgĩ discussed in Decolonizing the Mind. In fact, Ngũgĩ changed even his Christian name James to Thiong’o wa and went back to his mother tongue Gikuyu for his creative writing, while he is a Professor of Comparative literature uses English for his academic writings.
Fanon is critical of those liberals, who say that Negroes should be treated ‘kindly’, in a way they pity them and make them devoid of human dignity of equality. Fanon says at one place- ‘What I am asserting is that the European has a fixed concept of the Negro, and there is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: “How long have you been in France? You speak French so well.”
In other words, the Negro has got civilized and cultured by speaking colonial language ‘so well’, thus psychologically expressing the ‘superiority’ of the ‘white’! In India one can see the practical examples among public schools’ children, where they are asked to speak English even in their homes and make their ‘accent’ of language like a British or American, whereas the natural pronunciation of English with Bengali, South Indian or North Indian touch is mocked off, even if the written aspect of language of such person may be more competent than the so called British or American. Fanon observes this bitter reality that- ‘To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is.’ Fanon elaborates it further- ‘Historically, it must be understood that the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago.’ Compare it with the one section among Dalit movement pleading for English as a medium and source to become part of elite and corporate sector in India. Our old leftist Dalit intellectual Chandra Bhan Prasad is votary of this trend.
In second chapter Fanon moves to more complex subject of The Woman of Colour and the White Man. The men and women of both Whites and Blacks get attracted to each other, sometime marry too, but somehow their mental complexes come in the way of loving each other as two free human beings without any complex of colour or race. Both have a sense of superiority and inferiority and narcissism, which reflects upon their sexual relationship also. Third chapter title is reversal of the second chapter-The Man of Colour and the White Woman. As a practicing psychiatrist Fanon observes features of complexity in emotional and physical relations of both sexes shaped by the sense of colour culturally, even when they are intellectually advanced and sometime progressive too. Cultural, emotional and psychological fall out of such situations are described by Fanon in these words- ‘We know historically that the Negro guilty of lying with a white woman is castrated. The Negro who has had a white woman makes himself taboo to his fellows.’ There are many case studies by Fanon, but his conclusion is- ‘We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies a restructuring of the world.’ So how to restructure the world in nonracial, not casteist, non-discriminatory world?
Fanon moves on to fourth chapter with the title-The so-called Dependency Complex of the Colonized Peoples . Fanon debates this issue with another scholar Mannoni, author of The Psychology of Colonization and rebuts his arguments. Taking example of South Africa, Fanon rebuts Mannoni arguments-‘What is South Africa? A boiler into which thirteen million blacks are clubbed and penned in by two and a half million whites. If the poor whites hate the Negroes, it is not, as M. Mannoni would have us believe, because “racialism is the work of petty officials, small traders, and colonials who have toiled much without great success.” No; it is because the structure of South Africa is a racist structure’
Moving further Fanon discusses-The Fact of Blackness. Fanon reacts to others defining what a Negro is in their own definitions, to which Fanon responds-‘For my own part, I would certainly know how to react. And in one sense, if I were asked for a definition of myself, I would say that I am one who waits; I investigate my surroundings, I interpret everything in terms of what I discover, I become sensitive.’ In this chapter Fanon quotes many poems to describe the complex feelings involved even in matters of sexual relationships.
In sixth chapter-“The Negro and Psychopathology“, Fanon presents brief, deep psychoanalyses of colonized black people, and thus proposes the inability of black people to fit into the norms (social, cultural, racial) established by white society (the colonizer). That “a normal Negro child, having grown up in a normal Negro family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact of the white world.’ In next chapter-The Negro and Recognition, Fanon goes further deep in describing Negroes. After discussing Adler, in sub section of this chapter-The Black Man and Hegel, Fanon examines the dialectics of the philosopher and conveys his suspicions of the black man being under the rubric of a philosophy modeled after whiteness. According to Fanon there is a conflict that takes form internally as self-deprecation because of this white philosophical affirmation.’
In last chapter By Way of Conclusion, Fanon opines that both Black and White are torn due to historical past of racialism and for creating new society, he concludes the book with these words-
‘It is through the lasting tension of their freedom that
men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a
human world.
Superiority? Inferiority?
Why not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the
other, to explain the other to myself?
Was my freedom not given to me then in order to build the
world of the You?
At the conclusion of this study, I want the world to recognize,
with me, the open door of every consciousness.
My final prayer:
O my body, make of me always a man who questions!
Yes, in India we need to build a society where there are men who question. Even the weak tradition of questioning is being suppressed by the cult of Bhakti, rather Andh Bhakti(Blind Faith), against which Dr. Ambedkar, another victim of casteism, like racialism in Africa, opines that questioning is the biggest asset of mankind and the society which stops questioning is doomed to go back to barbarism as Rosa Luxemburg had warned. Bhagat Singh too wrote ‘Why I am an Atheist’, by questioning everything and phenomenon around him.
First step of liberation for ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ the last and classic book of Frantz Fanon lies in his first book-Black Skins and White Masks–
O my body, make of me always a man who questions!
In a short but rich and productive life of 36 years, Frantz Fanon had enriched the theory and practice of making socialist Revolution in the world!
———-
July
16. Jerome K Jerome, Ideal Thoughts of an Ideal Fellow, 1886 first edition
This is a pleasant book to read. Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer. He was born on 2d May 1859 in a town of England and died at the age of 68 years in Northampton on 14th June 1927. He was a playwright and humourist essay writer. There is a list of nearly a hundred books in his name on Wikipedia page, but he was known more for his books Three men in a Boat and Thoughts of an Ideal Fellow’.
The book consists of 14 independent articles arranged by themes:
ON BEING IDLE.
ON BEING IN LOVE.
ON BEING IN THE BLUES.
ON BEING HARD UP.
ON VANITY AND VANITIES.
ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ON THE WEATHER.
ON CATS AND DOGS.
ON BEING SHY.
ON BABIES.
ON EATING AND DRINKING.
ON FURNISHED APARTMENTS.
ON DRESS AND DEPORTMENT.
ON MEMORY.
All the essays are written in a style to create good naturedly humour, not black humour and one enjoys reading these light hearted essays.
August-September-October
17. Duggal, Kartar Singh, Bhagat Singh(Punjabi-Biography), 1984, New Delhi, Publication Division, Pages 86, Price 3/ Rupees
This small biography in small sized book was published nearly four decades ago, but it was not given much attention, partly due to Govt. publication, which had a bad circulation system. Now these books are available on online sale, so publication division books are more in circulation and get little more attention, still not to the extent private national and international publishers get. These books get hardly reviewed in national and credible media too.
It was pleasant surprise to read this small booklet format biography of Bhagat Singh, which is mostly carried on the facts of his life objectively, mostly based on perhaps Bhagat Singh niece Virendra Sandhu standard larger biography of three generations of her family. This book should have been published in thousands and distributed to school and college students free of cost.
18. Vidyalankar, Satyadev, Didi Sushila Mohan(Hindi Biography), 1965, Delhi Marwari Prakashan, Pages 390, Price 2/rupees and half Introduction by Dr. Yudhveer Singh
19. Bagchi Amitabh, Half the Night is gone(Novel), 2018, 320 pages Juggernaut
I bought this novel, due to reference of Bhagat Singh in it by some reviewers. Reference is there, s character Makhan Lal, an illegitimate child of Lala Motichand, who is given a job as teacher and is Marxist. Otherwise this novel is not my cup of tea. Story of a Sahitya Akademi award winner Hindi writer Vishwanath and woven into complex three generational story of Lala. Did read all, but without much pleasure.
20. Coleridge, S T, The Rime of Ancient Mariner (A long poem),
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest’s reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner’s story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.
21, Todd Marbel Loomis and Higginson T.W(Editors), Poems of Emily Dicknson in Three series, Complete
Emily Dickinson was an American poet who, despite the fact that less than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime, is widely considered one of the most original and influential poets of the 19th century.
Dickinson was born to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson’s writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily’s younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson’s work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content.
A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
22. Prabal, Harshvardhan and Ankur Goswami, Bhagat Singh ke Saathi (Hindi), 2022, Vaam Prakashan, Delhi , Pages 190
These are sketches of ten comrades of Bhagat Singh by three young researchers from JNU history cnetre. The selected revolutionaries are-Chandershekhar Azad, Sukhdev, Shiv Verma, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Rajguru, Batukeshwar Dutt, Jatindernath Das, Jaidev Kapoor, Bejoy Kumar Sinha and Durga Bhabhi, Most of these sketches were earlier published in online magazines like The Wire and Newsclick. These are fairly written with historical sources, but does not have the liveliness of sketches written by comrades of Bhagat Singh such as Shiv Verma, Bhagwan Das Mahaur, Sadashiv Malkapurkar, Sohan Singh Josh, Ajoy Ghosh etc. But as their writings are not in circulation except Shiv Verma’s Sansmritiyan, a fresh book with authentic narration of events is always welcome. But the young researchers have not showed humility towards the earlier writings.
Films-Plays etc. Watched in 2023
Films-Plays etc. Watched in 2023
14th January on Netflix
- Qala(कला ) A film by Anvita Dutt
The first film seen in 2023 was good, but ironic, it was watched around the first death anniversary of actor Irfan, whose son Babil’s debut film is it. Two days ago film writer Sanjay Chauhan has passed away. Film is complex psychological narrative and is a really artistic film, but a human tragedy!
Qala (transl. Art) is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language psychological drama film,[1] written and directed by Anvita Dutt.[2] The film is produced by Karnesh Ssharma under Clean Slate Filmz[3] and stars Tripti Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, and Babil Khan in his film debut.[4][5][6]
It was released on Netflix on 1 December 2022.[7] The film received positive reviews from critics
Set in 1940s Calcutta, Qala is about the tumultuous relationship between an aspiring singer and her domineering mother. The movie begins with Qala Manjushree who has just won the “Golden Vinyl”. She is being interviewed by several journalists who mention her brother. Distraught, Qala replies that she has no brother. In a flashback, her mother(Urmila) who was pregnant with twins gives birth to Qala, but her brother does not survive. Urmila attempts to smother Qala. Urmila teaches Qala the art of music but warns her against being a courtesan. In the present, Qala is haunted by visions of her brother who accuses her of taking what is rightfully his. A doctor advises Qala to rest. In another flashback, Qala is being taught music to perform in 3 days but Urmila chides her and accuses her of not working hard enough. Urmila locks Qala out in the freezing snow. At the performance, few people show up and Qala is upstaged by an orphan, Jagan. Urmila takes a liking to Jagan’s music and brings him home to live with her. Qala is jealous of Jagan. In the present, a renowned singer – Sanyal dies. In another flashback, her mother seduces Sanyal to obtain a chance for Jagan to sing with him. To further Jagan’s career, Urmila attempts to marry Qala off but Qala declines. Urmila hosts a party and invites several influential people. At the party, Qala feels invisible but is noticed by Sanyal, whom she kisses. Unfortunately, Jagan falls sick and cannot sing so Qala sings instead, impressing the guests. Jagan gets sicker to the point of being unable to sing but is cared for by Urmila. Qala seduces Sumant Kumar to obtain a chance at recording a song, taking Jagan’s place. That night Jagan talks to Qala one last time before he hangs himself in the forest. The next day, Qala discovers his body and hugs his corpse. Her mother is distraught and cradles Jagan in her hands. Urmila and Qala have a fight during which Qala calls Urmila a courtesan. Urmila forbids Qala from coming back to their house ever again. Qala leaves for Calcutta for her recording session. She is nervous and cannot sing even on the 11th take. She was forced to provide oral pleasure to Sumant, for a last chance. She recalls Jagan, who used to sing for himself. Taking his words into account, she successfully records the song. Anushka Sharma makes a cameo here as an actress. Qala slowly rises to fame as a singer. She becomes close with Majrooh, the songwriter who advises her to cease her arrangement with Sumant. While being interviewed by journalists again, she sees a vision of Jagan. While recording a song, she breaks down and sees snow falling all around her. Her mother hears her interview being broadcast over the radio. In a flashback, Qala drops a globule of mercury into Jagan’s milk before his performance, leading to his cough. Now, Qala attempts to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her doctor calls her mother and informs her of Qala’s suicide attempt. Her mother comes to Calcutta and sees that Qala has hanged herself. Her mother tearfully listens to Qala’s vinyl which she had sent to her in Himachal Pradesh.
28th January
- BBC documentary on Modi in two parts on Mobile link
23March-On flight Delhi- Toronto
- Mira Nair’s documentary on Satyajit Ray film Jalsaghar or The Music Room
It is 30- or 45-minutes documentary, with Satyajit Ray conversation included, could not find its details on internet, but very nice film 4. Sarkar film on Balasaheb Thackery
Sarkar (transl. Government) is a 2005 Indian Hindi-language political crime thriller film directed by Ram Gopal Varma. The film stars Amitabh Bachchan in the title role alongside Abhishek Bachchan as his younger son, along with Kay Kay Menon, Katrina Kaif, Tanisha Mukherjee, Supriya Pathak, Kota Srinivasa Rao, and Anupam Kher.[2] It is the first installment of the Sarkar film series.
Sarkar spawned two sequels: Sarkar Raj, which released on 6 June 2008, and Sarkar 3, which released on 12 May 2017. Sarkar was premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival.[3] The film is preserved at the American Academy of Motion Pictures library.[4]
Plot[edit]
Subhash Nagre, who is known by his followers as Sarkar, lives in Mumbai. The opening scenes show a rape victim’s father approaching Sarkar for justice (which the corrupt law and order system has failed to deliver), which Sarkar promptly establishes by having the rapist beaten up by his henchmen. His son Vishnu plays a sleazy producer who is more interested in the film actress Sapna than his wife Amrita. Sarkar’s other, more upright son Shankar returns from the United States with his love Pooja after completing his education there. Pooja’s doubts about Sarkar’s image eventually cause Shankar, who firmly believes in his father’s righteousness, to break up with her.
One day, a Dubai-based don, Rasheed, tries to strike a deal with Sarkar; he promptly refuses on moral grounds and also forbids him from doing it himself. Rasheed tries to eliminate Sarkar’s supremacy with the help of Selvar Mani, Sarkar’s former associate, MLA Vishram Bhagat, and Swami Virendra. Meanwhile, they trap Sarkar by assassinating a righteous, upright, Ahinsa political leader and an outspoken critic of Sarkar, Motilal Khurana, and frame Sarkar for the murder. Everyone, including Vishnu, believes that Sarkar is guilty, but Shankar has deep faith in his father. Sarkar is arrested and imprisoned. Shankar now takes over the position of Sarkar temporarily. On learning of a plot to murder his father in prison, he approaches the police commissioner and asks him to arrange stronger security for his father, only for the commissioner to mock Shankar and his father beside not providing protection. Shankar gets a feeling that the police commissioner wants Sarkar to get murdered. Shankar and Khansaab, one of Sarkar’s men, try to ask Mani for help to prevent possible murder, but Mani ultimately betrays them when he reveals that he is in an alliance with Rasheed. Rasheed prepares to kill Shankar and Khansaab, but only Khansaab is killed when he decides to sacrifice himself for Shankar. By the time Shankar reaches the prison and appropriate action is taken, the attempt on Sarkar’s life is already made. Sarkar is later acquitted. He remains bedridden as Shankar takes on Sarkar’s enemies.
Meanwhile, Mani, Swami, Vishram, and Rasheed try to convince Vishnu to murder Sarkar. Vishnu was previously expelled from Sarkar’s house because he had murdered the actor who was having an affair with Sapna. Vishnu returns home pretending to have repented. When he approaches Sarkar in the dark of the night with the intent of murdering him, Shankar foils his plan and later kills him. Shankar eliminates Rasheed, Vishram, and Selvar Mani. He also succeeds in making Swami his puppet. Shankar has also realised that Chief Minister Madan Rathod was really behind everything; Rasheed and everyone else were merely pawns. This results in legal action against Rathod. The closing scenes show a woman approaching Shankar for justice to a fake encounter of her husband by the police and calling Shankar the Sarkar, while Subhash is busy with family.
1st May-On Toronto-Delhi flight
5. Bazigar by Shahrukh Khan
A popular film of 1993, but was not impressed much
Baazigar (transl. Gambler) is a 1993 Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film directed by Abbas–Mustan and produced by Venus Movies. It stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in lead roles, while Raakhee, Shilpa Shetty, Dalip Tahil, Siddharth Ray, and Johnny Lever appear in supporting roles, with the soundtrack composed by Anu Malik. Originally Divya Bharti signed for role of Priya Chopra but because of her sudden demise Kajol selected for her role and Kajol was originally roled for Seema Chopra was selected for Priya’s role and Seema’s role went to Shilpa Shetty. The film is about a young man seeking to avenge the fall of his family. The story is loosely based on Ira Levin‘s 1953 novel A Kiss Before Dying and its 1991 film adaptation of the same name.[1]
This was Khan’s breakthrough role as the sole lead (his first as an anti-hero), along with being his eighth film out of eighty throughout his 30-year career, Kajol’s first commercial success and Shetty’s film debut.[2][3]
Baazigar was released on 12 November 1993, coinciding with the festival of Diwali.[4] Made on a budget of ₹40 million, the film was declared a success at the box office with a worldwide gross of ₹320 million.[5] Apart from emerging as a major financial success, the film has become a cult film over years due to its suspense, story, screenplay, soundtrack and performances of the cast.[6] It was the first collaboration between Khan and Kajol, who went on to become one of India’s most iconic on-screen couples. It helped establish Khan, Kajol, Shetty and Malik in Hindi films, and the soundtrack sold over 10 million units, thus becoming the highest-selling album of the year.[7]
At the 39th Filmfare Awards, Baazigar received 10 nominations, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actress and Best Female Debut (both for Shetty), and won 4 awards, including Best Actor (Khan) and Best Music Director (Malik).[8]
Ajay Sharma is a young boy who grows up to seek revenge for his father’s death caused by Madan Chopra, a rich businessman. Chopra has two daughters: Seema and Priya. Ajay begins a secret relationship with Seema. Chopra takes part in his last car race in Madras, only to learn that another participant, Vicky Malhotra, who Ajay assumes the role as, let him win on purpose to meet him. Chopra is impressed with ‘Vicky’, and Priya falls in love with him. This way, Ajay manages to date both Seema and Priya using different identities.
Later, Ajay convinces Seema to commit suicide with him, when her father arranges her marriage with someone else. They write and sign suicide notes, but he then lies that he was simply testing her and rips up his note while keeping hers. They make plans to get married at the registrar’s office the next day. However, while waiting for the office to open, Ajay takes Seema to the roof of the building and pushes her off, murdering her. He then discreetly mails her suicide note to her house. Chopra hastily orders the case closed to prevent further embarrassment should the suicide note be discovered. Suspecting that her sister didn’t commit suicide, Priya secretly continues the investigation with the help of police inspector Karan Saxena, an old friend from college.
Ravi, a college friend of Seema who had a crush on her, tells Priya that he has a photo of Seema and Ajay together at a birthday party back at his hostel. Before Priya can reach Ravi to see the photo, Ajay finds out about this and murders Ravi. In their struggle, Ajay forces him to sign a suicide note, which makes it appear as though Ravi is Seema’s murderer. Thus, the investigation is halted a second time. Meanwhile, Ajay, posing as ‘Vicky’, slowly wins Chopra’s confidence. Chopra decides to get ‘Vicky’ and Priya engaged.
It is revealed through a flashback that Chopra had been a project manager in the company run by Ajay’s late father Mr. Sharma, but when Sharma discovered that he was embezzling money, he had Chopra imprisoned for three years. After Madan completed his jail term, he asked for forgiveness, and Sharma’s wife persuaded her husband to re-employ him. However, unbeknownst to anyone, Chopra had returned to exact revenge. One day, Sharma had to go on a business trip, so he handed the power of attorney to Chopra, who used the opportunity to become the company’s owner. Sharma learned of this after returning, but it was too late. His family was ejected from their palatial home after Chopra took a loan on Sharma’s name. Ajay witnessed Chopra eve-teasing his mother when she came to ask for their home back, and she subsequently cursed him to tragedy and helplessness later on in life. Heartbroken, Ajay vowed to make Chopra pay.
Back in the present, Seema’s friend Anjali meets Priya and Ajay at a jewellery shop. She also discovers a photo of Seema and Ajay at her birthday party. ‘Vicky’ and Priya get engaged that evening. Anjali phones the Chopra residence during Ajay’s engagement party to warn them that Ajay and ‘Vicky’ look the same, to which Babulal, head servant of the Chopra household, answers. As Babulal tries to inform Priya about this, Ajay intercepts the phone call, arrives at Anjali’s place, and kills her, stuffing her body in a suitcase and throwing it in a river.
History repeats itself with Chopra handing over the power of attorney to ‘Vicky’ when he has to go on a business trip. However, a man and his dog find Anjali’s body soon after on a beach, and when Priya and Inspector Karan hear about this, they realize that the murderer is still alive. Ajay decides to hasten his plans on realizing that Priya and Karan are hellbent on finding the killer, and that he has fallen in love with Priya. His plans hit a glitch when he and Priya run into the real Vicky Malhotra, Ajay’s friend, whose identity he had taken, which makes Priya suspicious. After Chopra returns from his business trip, he is shocked to find that the company is run by the Sharma group. Ajay reveals the truth of his desire to seek revenge and kicks Chopra out.
Priya learns of Ajay’s true identity from his friend, Vicky and rushes to Ajay’s home in Panvel. She is shocked to see a marriage locket with photos of him with her sister. Ajay comes home, where she confronts him with his misdeeds. He then tells her his story and also tells her that due to the poverty her father forced his family into, his father died of a heart attack, and his younger sister died of illness. His mother went into a state of shock as a result of the loss of her husband and daughter, and in her mental instability, she is unable to recognize Ajay as her son. Priya realizes that it is her father who is at fault as Ajay introduces her to his mother. Chopra arrives at his home, shoots Ajay in the arm, and has his goons beat him up.
Soon his mother comes back to her senses, and when trying to intervene, Chopra injures her, angering Ajay. He fights the goons viciously and chases Chopra to the top of a wall at some ruins. He is about to kill Chopra when he is persuaded by police inspector Karan to have mercy for his mother’s sake. Chopra takes the opportunity to impale him with a rod and laughs maniacally. Ajay laughs back and hugs Chopra, impaling him fatally with the same rod, and they both fall off the wall. He tells his mother that he has regained everything and collapses in her arms. Priya, Inspector Karan, and his mother watch despondently as Ajay succumbs to his injuries, finally he died in peace in his mother’s arm.
6. Jalsaghar by Satyajit Ray
A very fine film.
Jalsaghar[1] (Bengali: জলসাঘর Jalsāghar, lit. ‘The Music Room’) is a 1958 Indian Bengali drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray, based on a popular short story by Bengali writer Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, and starring Chhabi Biswas. The fourth of Ray’s feature films, it was filmed at Nimtita Raajbari, in Nimtita, Aurangabad, Murshidabad. Despite initial poor critical reception in India, Jalsaghar went on to win the Presidential Award for best film in New Delhi,[2] and played a significant role in establishing Ray’s international reputation as a director. It has since gained near-universal critical acclaim,[3] and has come to be regarded by the cinema community as one of the greatest films of all time.[4][5][6][7][8]
Plot[edit]
Jalsaghar depicts the end days of a decadent zamindar (landlord) in Bengal and his efforts to uphold his family prestige while facing economic adversity. The landlord, Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), is a just but otherworldly man who loves to spend time listening to music and putting up spectacles rather than managing his properties ravaged by floods and the government’s abolition of the zamindari system after Independence. He is challenged by a commoner who has attained riches through business dealings, in putting up spectacles and organising music fests. This is the tale of a zamindar who has nothing left but respect and sacrifices his family and wealth trying to retain it.
Although the film received mostly poor reviews in India, it received the Presidential Award in New Delhi for best film.[2] When the film was gradually released in Europe and the US in the early 1960s it became a critical and financial hit and helped establish Ray’s international reputation, although Ray said that in 1958 he did not think that the film would be successful in foreign markets.[13] New Statesman film critic John Coleman compared Ray to Jean Renoir[14] and Marie Seton said that the film “challenged the whole convention of songs and dances in India cinema. Audiences…conditioned to the introduction of songs and dances as entertainment interludes and [as] dramatic and romantic stresses, had never before been confronted with…classical singing and dancing as integral focal points of realistic sequences.”[15] John Russell Taylor said that the film was “one of Ray’s most masterly films, exquisitely photographed and directed with a complete, unquestioning mastery of mood … For those willing to place themselves under its hypnotic spell it offers pleasures of unique delicacy.”[15] Roger Ebert hailed it as “[Ray’s] most evocative film, and he fills it with observant details.”[16] In 1963 Bosley Crowther praised the “delicacy of direction … [and] eloquence of Indian music and the aurora of mise en scène.”[13] However, that same year Stanley Kauffmann criticised the film, calling it “a deeply felt, extremely tedious film…the Indian music is simply uncongenial and tiresome to our ears.”[13] In 1965 Derek Malcolm called it Ray’s “most perfect film.”[13] When the film was released in Paris in 1981 it was a surprise hit and led many French critics to adopt a new appreciation for Ray that had not been common in France up to that time.[13] San Francisco Chronicle critic Edward Guthmann described it as “A wonderful tale of pride and the fools it makes of men.”[17] Werner Herzog said about Jalshaghar “The most amazing Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and there’s one film, really beautiful, it’s called The Music Room… And it’s of phenomenal beauty and Ray really knew how to use music and create a drama around music.”[18] Pauline Kael gave the film a rave review writing ” great, flawed, maddening film — hard to take but probably impossible to forget. It’s often crude and it’s poorly constructed, but it’s a great experience. Worrying over its faults is like worrying over whether King Lear is well constructed; it really doesn’t matter”.[19]
- Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. Voted #20 on the list of “100 Best Films” by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.[4] Was ranked at #27, #146 and #183, respectively, in the Sight and Sound list of Greatest Films in 1992,[5] 2002[6] and 2012.[7] Film critic Derek Malcolm ranked the film at No. 56 on his list of the “Top 100 Movies” in 2001.[22] The British Film Institute included it in their list of ‘360 Classics’.[8] The film got the 7th spot (jointly with few other films) on the list of Cinemaya‘s Greatest Asian Films (1998). Recently, Busan International Film Festival featured it at no. 18 (jointly with few other films) in their list of 100 Best Asian Cinema.
- 10-12 June
7. Scoop-Hansal Mehta six-episode Netflix film
A very gripping serial and a film show with a message. The reality of fall of journalism and also of the whole social system becoming insensitive to human concerns.
Scoop[1] is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language crime drama streaming television series created and directed by Hansal Mehta and Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul for Netflix. It stars Karishma Tanna, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Harman Baweja in lead roles, along with Prosenjit Chatterjee, Tannishtha Chatterjee and Deven Bhojani in supporting roles.[2] The series is produced by Sarita Patil and Dikssha Jyote Routray under the banner Matchbox Shots.[3] It is streaming via netflix since 2 June 2023.[4]
The series is based on Jigna Vora’s biographical memoir Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison. It follows the real-life story of Jigna Vora who was accused of murder of mid-day reporter Jyotirmoy Dey in June 2011.[5][6]
8-9-… Lust Stories 1&2 (4+4 eight episodes)
Season 1-
It was in year 2018, when these stories directed by big names created a few ripples on OTT platform
Anurag Kashyap
Kalindi (Radhika Apte), a college professor, engages in a one night stand with a student of hers named Tejas (Akash Thosar). The morning after, she reassures herself that it was only a one-time occurrence but later stresses over the power dynamic of a student-teacher relationship. Multiple scenes are woven throughout the segment which depict Kalindi speaking to someone off-screen, in the fashion of an interview. During these cuts, she reveals that she is married to a man named Mihir, who is 12 years older than her and remains a close confidante. Inspired by his adventurous stories of love and numerous short-term relationships, Kalindi is also on a mission to explore her own sexuality. She begins dating her colleague Neeraj (Randeep Jha) but breaks up with him due to his firm belief in monogamy and his sexual awkwardness. She realizes that Tejas is beginning a relationship with his classmate Natasha (Ridhi Khakhar), which Tejas vehemently denies. To get him to confess, Kalindi obsessively stalks the couple, behaves rudely towards Natasha, and even breaks into Tejas’s room to search for evidence. Finally, in her exasperation, Kalindi relays to Tejas that she was interested in him and that she wishes him luck with Natasha. Tejas tells her that he was unaware of her feelings and is willing to leave Natasha for her, to which Kalindi replies, “Are you mad? I’m married”.
Zoya Akhtar
Sudha (Bhumi Pednekar) and Ajit (Neil Bhoopalam)are secretly in a passionate sexual relationship. It is revealed that Sudha is his maid, who arrives daily to clean his bachelor apartment. Ajit’s parents arrive to stay for some time, during which Sudha is shown to diligently work for the family, despite earning only ignorance from Ajit. One day, a family arrives with their daughter for a marriage proposal and Sudha is silently heartbroken. As she prepares food, she watches the two families finalize the marriage and discuss the futures of their children. Sudha serves them tea and finds Ajit romancing his bride-to-be in his room. She appears to be desolate as Ajit’s mother distributes sweets and congratulates her. Sudha slowly eats a piece of the sweets and resuming her normal routine, is shown to leave the apartment after yet another day of work.
Dibakar Banerjee
Reena (Manisha Koirala), a banker, is in an extra-marital affair with her husband’s close friend Sudhir (Jaideep Ahlawat). The two are in love and have maintained their secret relationship for 3 years. During one of Reena’s visits to Sudhir’s home, Salman (Sanjay Kapoor) relays to Sudhir that he suspects Reena is cheating on him. This causes Sudhir and Reena to panic. Reena voices they should tell Salman about the affair so they can openly be together and is disheartened at Sudhir’s reaction as he does not seem to think it a possibility. Reena ends up calling Salman to Sudhir’s home. Reena reveals to Salman that she is unhappy in their marriage, and feels that Salman only needs a mother for his children, not a wife. After she reveals her 3-year affair with Sudhir, Salman breaks down and asks her to stay for the sake of their children. Later that night, the couple bond and make love whilst Reena is grief-stricken. The next morning, she tells Sudhir that Salman knows about the affair, wants her to end it and that Sudhir can never “know” that Salman was aware of the affair at all. Reena tells Sudhir that she cannot meet him again and leaves with her husband.
Karan Johar
Megha (Kiara Advani) is a young school teacher who is engaged to Paras (Vicky Kaushal), an office worker. After their marriage, Megha discovers that while Paras is continuously pleasured during sex, he is not aware of her dissatisfaction. His family pushes her to bear children, as they believe this is the only pleasure that a woman desires. One day, Megha witnesses her colleague Rekha (Neha Dhupia) using a vibrator in the school library. This motivates Megha to use one too; however, when she attempts to try it out at home, Paras arrives in a disheveled state from an accident and she rushes out to the living room with her vibrator still inside her. Paras’ grandmother mistakes the vibrator’s remote for a TV remote and unknowingly begins to increase the intensity. Megha enjoys it with pleasure. She tries to control herself but fails. Megha eventually climaxes into an orgasm as her mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and Paras watch in shock. Enraged, Paras’s mother demands a divorce and announces that Megha’s womb is not suitable to bear her son’s children. One month later, Paras meets Megha and tells her that he does not wish to divorce her just because she made a mistake. After she firmly says that she made no mistake and that a woman has more desires than just children, Paras romantically feeds her ice cream, indicating that he is interested in pleasing her.
Season-2
Again four more famed directors create four more stories five years later in 2023
Lust Stories 2 is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language anthology film, and second installment of Lust Stories, consisting of four short film segments directed by R. Balki, Konkona Sen Sharma, Amit Ravindernath Sharma and Sujoy Ghosh. Co-produced by Ronnie Screwvala of RSVP and Ashi Dua Sara of Flying Unicorn Entertainment, the film has an ensemble cast including Mrunal Thakur, Kumud Mishra, Amruta Subhash, Angad Bedi, Neena Gupta, Kajol, Tamannaah Bhatia, Tillotama Shome, Vijay Varma and others.[2][3][4][5] It was released on Netflix on 29 June 2023.[6][7]
Plot[edit]
The film is a series of four short stories on the topic of love, sex, violence, and relationships.
Made for Each Other R Balki
When Veda and Arjun’s families meet to discuss their marriage, the conversation revolves around their shared interests and hobbies. Both sets of parents seem to agree that the couple would make a ‘perfect match’, as they share many hobbies and common interests. Veda’s grandmother, who is religious and widowed, walks into the room, and casually enquires if the couple have had sex yet. The other elders are shocked, and Arjun and Veda are left embarrassed. Veda’s grandmother insists on the importance of physical intimacy in a relationship, as she believes hobbies can be abandoned and interests change over time. Later that night, she privately narrates to Veda her relationship with her own husband, Veda’s grandfather, which was based on mutual attraction for each other, as well as the ability to satisfy the other in bed. Taking cues from this, Veda and Arjun become intimate, often renting private hotel rooms to engage in intercourse. Veda confesses to her grandmother that, though she enjoys the experience, she isn’t left feeling fully satisfied. Meanwhile, Veda’s parents are chided by Veda’s grandmother for having let the spark die out of their own relationship, and forcing the same on to their daughter. One afternoon, Veda and Arjun visit her grandmother, and excitedly proclaim that they have finally understood how to satisfy the other person in bed. Veda’s grandmother is pleased to hear this, and open heartedly offers her blessings for their wedding. She even offers to set up her room for them, to use on their wedding night as a honeymoon suite.
The Mirror-Konkana Sen Sharma
Ishita is a graphic designer, in her early 40s, who lives alone. She suffers from frequent migraines. Her maid, Seema, visits during the day, to clean her apartment. One afternoon, Ishita walks in on Seema having sex with her husband, Kamal, in her bedroom. Too shocked to confront them, Ishita hides while the couple finish and leave. Ishita realizes this is a daily occurrence but is unable to stop it. She also realizes being turned on by watching them have sex. The next day, she secretly starts hiding in her apartment, to spy on them through a mirror and leaves her office daily around 3 pm on the pretence of seeing an acupuncturist for her migraines. One day, Seema spots Ishita in the same mirror and realizes she is being watched. Unable to confront Ishita lest she be fired, but also excited by having someone watch her, she continues and pretends as if nothing has happened. One afternoon, Ishita accidentally knocks something over, causing a commotion and forcing Seema to confront her. The two hurl accusations at each other and Seema is fired. She struggles to land another job, while Ishita cannot find another maid as rumours about the altercation have spread. At night, Kamal and Seema argue with each other outside their tiny one-room apartment, right where she found and yelled at her daughter for conversing with her boyfriend. Kamal is at first angry with Seema for screaming at her for something trivial in public at odd hours of the night, which then evolved into an argument about her willingly allowing an invasion of their privacy by Ishita but reconciles when he realizes she did so intentionally as a turn on. Some weeks later, Ishita and Seema run into each other while buying groceries. They enquire about the other’s wellbeing, and Seema asks if she can come back to work. Ishita agrees, and hands over the keys to her apartment. The next day, Ishita sneaks back into her apartment at 3pm, indicating a return to the old patterns.
Sex with the Ex-Sujoy Ghosh
A successful CEO of a company, who is married but has a strained relationship with his wife, meets with an accident while driving his old car. Before the accident, he had a video call with his girlfriend, who distracted him and caused him to crash into a tree while trying to avoid hitting a cyclist. Unable to start his car or use his phone, he seeks help from the cyclist and they go to a nearby village. He asks a reluctant mechanic to fix his car, but there is no phone signal available. He goes to a coffee shop and hears a familiar song playing nearby. He follows the sound and finds a woman in a red saree dancing at a community hall. He tries to approach her, but she denies being the person he thinks she is and asks him to leave. A police officer arrives and addresses her by the name he called her, which makes him happy. Inside her house, it is revealed that they were once married, but she disappeared ten years ago. He is thrilled to see her again, but she wants him to leave. They recall their past and have conversations, during which he behaves inappropriately towards her. She repeatedly asks him to go away, but he refuses. They discuss the events leading up to her disappearance, and she suspects that their friend Anu was involved. He reveals that he married Anu and had children with her, becoming the CEO of Anu’s father’s company. This angers Shanti, who thinks Anu orchestrated her abduction to marry Vijay. They have sex, and while lying together, Shanti mentions the pregnancy test she took before her disappearance. Vijay’s response reveals that he manipulated the situation and planned everything to marry Anu. Shanti realises this and confronts him, and he admits to suffocating and killing her with a pillow. In order to escape the arriving policeman, Vijay escapes through a window. Back at his car, he sees people pulling his body out, thinking he is dead because he didn’t respond. Shanti appears next to him and tells him he should have returned when he had the chance to which he screams.
Tilchatta Amit Sharma
Suraj Singh is a wealthy former king in rural Rajasthan, who lives in a palace with his wife and step-son. He is sexually abusive towards, not just his wife, Devyani, but also to young girls in the village. He had married Devyani after lusting for her in a prostitution house, and took in her son too. After he assaults a maid working at the palace, forcing her to quit, Devyani is tasked with a replacement. On a regular weekly call, Devyani’s mother, who runs a prostitution house, tells Devyani of a young prostitute contracting “the disease” (HIV) through a client. Devyani’s mother feels bad for the girl, as her life is ruined at a young age. Meanwhile, Devyani is preparing her 20-year-old son, Ankur, to move to United Kingdom for higher education. Ankur is reluctant to leave his mother alone with his stepfather, but Devyani’s long-term plan is to follow Ankur abroad once he settles down. Suraj discourages Ankur in his plans, and also keeps chiding him for his unknown father. Suraj sets his on Rekha, the new maid hired by Devyani to replace the one who quit. Rekha, is young and innocent, and Suraj tries to take advantage of her on the pretext of getting a massage. Ankur walks in at the same time, and Suraj is forced to leave. Meanwhile, Ankur notices Rekha’s disheveled appearance as she adjusts her clothing. At night, Devyani is awoken by sounds of pleasure and moaning emanating from a room in the castle. She believes it is Suraj and Rekha, and seems oddly pleased. Unknown to Suraj, Rekha is the former prostitute, hired from Devyani’s mother, to work in the castle. Devyani installs her, hoping that she will pass the “disease” on to Suraj once he inevitably assaults her. As Devyani walks towards the room to seek confirmation, she is interrupted by the sound of Suraj stumbling into the house. He is drunk and unable to walk, and passes out in the courtyard. Devyani is shocked, and turns with a look of horror at the sounds still emanating from the room. She realizes her plan has horribly backfired, as Rekha is likely having sex with Ankur.
These OTT platform films, more than just films, series long enough to watch in many days are becoming more popular. Due to advancement in technology, these films and series are well made, but like theatre films, these are mixture of good and bad.
24th September
10. Afwah-film by Sudhir Mishra
This is one of better films made by Sudhir Mishra, reflecting on 09st 2014 socio=political reality of India.
Rahab Ahmed, who is presumably the CEO of a telecom company, drives through a single lane desert road while a speeding convoy of motorbikes and cars headed by a local goon named Chandan pass by. Within the city of Sawalpur, a rally led by local politician, Vikram Singh “Vicky Banna”, is passing through the city. A sporadic stone-pelting event starts and the rally turns back. Incidentally, the Muslim neighborhood and the goons of the politician clash resulting in the terrifying death of a butcher behind a closed shop by Chandan’s hands.
In a lecture series, Rahab gives a talk that he came back to India because he would like to contribute here and did not feel at home in the U.S.A.
Next day, Vicky’s fiancee Nivedita “Nivi” Singh has a heated altercation and accuses him of being a coward and being complicit in the violence. Irate Vicky pushes Nivi away as he gets a call from Nivi’s father, Gyan Singh, who is presumably the leader of the political party. He advises Vicky to get rid of Chandan but Vicky argues that Chandan has been with them since Vicky’s father’s time. Gyan Singh calls a local police officer and tells him to kill Chandan. Gyan Singh next calls Nivi as he tries to explain all the political scheming to her daughter but she hangs up and smashes a picture of him in anger. Chandan calls Vicky and tells him that he is at Vicky’s farmhouse and laying low for a while.
Vicky goes to meet the local police officer, Inspector Sandeep Tomar, who informs him that Chandan already has had previous complaints and that he has to die and Vicky should think of his future political career instead. Vicky gives up Chandan’s location to Tomar.
Rahab drives to his wife who is in a Literature Fest in Nahargarh Fort. Meanwhile, Vicky reaches home to find that Nivi ran away from the house leaving a letter explaining that she does not want any part in the family politics. Due to congestion on the road Rahab has to take a change in route via Sawalpur. Vicky’s goons locate Nivi while she was feeling but is still in Sawalpur. Incidentally, while Vicky and his goons try to convince and hard-hand Nivi in a public space, Rahab passes by and ends up helping her escape the goons in his car. An ensuing car chase follows but they get them off their tail as their car falls in a ditch. Rahab accompanies Nivi as they make their way to Nivi’s friend, Saif’s place and she explains that he needs to come with her else the goons will kill him if they find him.
Tomar tries to assassinate Chandan but kills a farmhouse worker instead who falls inside a water ditch. Chandan sees all this and runs away scared. Nivi and Rahab make their way to her friend’s house as she explains that she is running away from her home and does not want to marry Vicky. Vicky receives a false confirmation from Tomar that Chandan has been terminated.
Gyan Singh sends a social media manipulator to Vicky who explains that he can circulate fake news that Nivi and Rahab have fled together and that it is a case of “love jihad” in order for them to be easily traceable as foolish people might help them in their search. Chandan calls Vicky’s closest goon, Jay, informing that someone is trying to kill him. Jay tells him to flee towards another city called Doli. Nivi and Rahab reach Saif’s house as he informs them that section 144 has been imposed on the city due to religious unrest and clashes due to the fake “love jihad” story. Vicky watches as the fake story becomes viral and panics. Rahab leaves Nivi as he wants to get back to Nahargarh despite the circumstances and wants to collect his belongings from the car so that he can be on his own way. The goons find the car first and at the same time he learns about the “love jihad” conspiracy.
The sister of the person killed in the farmhouse (whose name is Santosh) finds the dead body and informs the police but a female police officer tries to gaslight her and cover for Tomar’s fault. Chandan gets a lift from a random Muslim truck driver who is also driving towards Doli and has a fleeting but interesting conversation about kidney regeneration that the driver’s doctor had told him about (that he can keep donating kidneys because they regenerate).
Rahab goes back to Saif but Saif leaves Nivi and Rahab with a motorbike and asks them to leave. Nivi says that Rahab needs to stick to him else he might be killed. They make their way towards Nahargarh as he wants to go to a book signing of his wife. Saif’s father, believing the fake news, informs Vicky. Vicky arrives at Saif’s house but doesn’t find them and, at the same time, receives a call from Chandan from the truck learning about his whereabouts. Vicky meets Tomar and gives him another chance to terminate Chandan. Tomar gives orders to the female police officer to kill the sister of the dead farmhouse person to remove any witness.
Nivi and Rahab reach a blocked road and leave the motorbike and run to join a crowd of people fleeing the clashes to a warehouse where they see the goons also enter. They make a run for it again and make their way through a highway and find the butcher’s family members who are also leaving Sawalpur who plead to Nivi to not inform Vicky or Gyan Singh about their temporary stop fearing further persecution. Nivi is disheartened and Rahab reveals that he came to India because he was scared by aggressive behavior of nationalist fanatics he encountered in the U.S. and not because of his benevolent tendencies. One of Vicky’s cowardly and clumsy goons finds them on the highway and shoots Nivi unintentionally in a clumsy handling of the gun and rides off.
Tomar intercepts Chandan’s truck but Chandan escapes. The goon who shot Nivi calls Chandan to inform about his mishap and that she might be taken to the nearest Agarwal Hospital on the highway. Chandan asks this clumsy goon if he knows why Tomar is behind him, to which he replies that he had overheard Tomar and Vicky talking about him. Chandan picks up the hint that Vicky might have been annoyed at him. The female police officer who has been tracking Tomar catches up to him. Tomar asks her if she took care of the sister to which she gives an off-hand reply and then helps him chase Chandan instead.
Rahab brings Nivi to the Agarwal Hospital and finds a doctor who happens to be his acquaintance to get help quickly. Tomar calls Vicky and asks him to send all his goons to follow the truck Chandan had escaped on. Instead Vicky asks his social media manipulator to spread another fake news that the truck is smuggling beef. Just as Nivi’s operation is over, Vicky’s goons and Chandan reach the hospital at the same time. Chandan shoots the goons and helps still injured Nivi and Rahab flee towards Nahargarh in the “beef-smuggling” truck in return for Nivi’s to vouch for his life to Vicky.
One of the living goons informs Vicky about the hospital incident and Vicky rushes to the hospital. Vicky learns that Chandan, Nivi and Rahab have left on the truck towards Nahargarh. Vicky calls the social media manipulator to undo the “beef-smuggling” truck fake news. The manipulator and his team flees hearing this leaving. Frustrated, Vicky calls Tomar to intercept the truck on its way to Nahargarh.
Rahab makes a video of Nivi telling her part of the story counteracting the fake news but owing to it being a video it does not get completely uploaded to Twitter (not X yet) due to poor network in the remote roads of Rajasthan. Rahab also gets the “beef-smuggling” truck message and they take a diversion stop and look at the trailing lights of bikes that are trying to find them.
As they reach the entrance of the Nahargarh Fort, the gates are closed as security forces and the manager of the event, all believing in the fake news, deny them entry. Rahab calls his wife inside who is also unable to convince the managers about Rahab’s innocence. As Rahab pleads outside, his wife pleads as the situation tenses. Vicky reaches the entrance of the gate and orders Chandan to kill Rahab banging at the gate of the fort. Chandan being scared of Vicky follows and stabs Rahab and his phone falls on the ground with the video being completely uploaded to Twitter. Rahab kicks Chandan and runs away bleeding. Vicky drives away with Nivi in the truck. Rahab is chased by Chandan, who is shot by a pursuing Tomar and killed. Vicky halts to a stop in front of a mob who identify the “beef-smuggling” truck. Nivi hugs Vicky and the mob misunderstands Vicky to be Rahab, mercilessly beating him up. Tomar wants to shoot Nivi but the female police officer stops him and blackmails him to follow her orders revealing that she has kept Santosh’s sister alive.
Rahab reaches the performance stage of the Lit Fest as the show ends and his wife rushes to help him. Later police find out that the “beef-smuggling” truck was full of donkeys.
A post-credit scene shows Rahab recovering from this stab injury. Nivi stands for election instead of Vicky with the female police officer and Jay behind her and Rahab is seen far in the crowd. Rahab returns to his home and finds it charred.
28th October
11. Tanashah-Dance-cum-play by Navtej Johar
Based on Bhagat Singh essay Why I am an Atheist, it is good one hour performance by Navtej Johar, known for his dance performance from Mumbai.
3rd November Traveling
12. Bheed, a film by Anubhav Sinha
Bheed (transl. Crowd) is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language social drama film[3] written, directed and produced by Anubhav Sinha. It is a fictional story set during the real events of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in India.It stars Rajkummar Rao in the lead role along with Bhumi Pednekar, Dia Mirza, Ashutosh Rana, Pankaj Kapur and Kritika Kamra.
Shooting of the film commenced in October 2021 and ended in December 2021. The film was released on 24 March 2023 to positive reviews, but was a commercial failure.
Bheed is a real account of the largest migration in Indian history (since the 1947 partition) during the quarantine in Covid period of2020. It tells the story of how several characters deal with the lockdown and migrate to a safe place. The tragedy faced by India poor people during Covid has been well documented in this feature film. Rajkumar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar have played their role well. Film has a sharp comment of killing anybody in the name of Naxalism by police in India.
11th November on Netflix- traveling
13. Maine Gandhi ko Nahin Maara-a 2005 film by Jahnu Barua
Scripted by our late Jnuite friend Sanjay Chauhan, it is good film of a psychological patient played by Anupam Kher and his daughter played by Urmila Matondkar. Director Jahnu Baruah is known for his artistic films. A Hindi retired Professor got schezopjerinic by imagining that he had killed Gandhi and is forgetting his time sense. His daughter cares for him at the cost of his boyfriend marrying another girl, but he is treated by staging a play.
Book Readings in 2023
Book Readings in 2023
January-February
- Sonnets of Shakespeare
Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest literatures of all times. His period is from 1564, when he was born in Stratford and 1616, when he died in London after a fulsome creative life. He wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets and two narrative poems. His works have been translated into almost every language of the world. He moved to London after marriage in 1582 and helped build Globe Theatre in 1592, which continues to show his plays till date. Shakespeare sonnets are of 14 lines each. Some sonnets he wrote as part of his plays, these are different from 154 sonnets. Some of the sonnets are very good, depicting emotions and some are critical also. But as poetry, these are not as touching as William Blake poetry is.
June
- Dhanwantri/Pc Joshi-Bleeding Punjab, September 1947 reprint-2022 by Sri Guru Singh Sabha Chandigarh
This pamphlet by Dhanwantri was published as report on Punjab communal riots by CPI, with introduction by then CPI General Secretary PC Joshi, this has been reprinted by Singh Sabha Chandigarh. The report becomes relevant as present circumstances of Indian society under a religious fundamentalist regime is reminding the cruelities and barbarities of 1947. Some comments can be applied to present situation also. Dhanwantri was comrade of Bhagat Singh, suffered a lot, later became activist and leading labour leader of CPI in Jammu, where he came from in revolutionary activities in Lahore. He had died at quite an early age. PC Joshi introduction adds not much to the report, as he repeats the observations of Dhanwantri report. This report is definitely an important document to understand RSS leashed communal fascist atmosphere in the post 2014 India!
July
- Sehgal, Satya Pal , Doosri Kitab(Hindi poetry), 2023, Delhi, Vaani Prakashan, pages 170 price 350/ rupees
Satya Pal Sehgal, retired as Professor in Hindi from Panjab University Chandigarh. He had few collections of Hindi poetry earlier and had also translated Punjabi poetry of Lal Singh Dil in Hindi. This collection is dedicated to his father and has long personalised introduction, underlining delay in publishing this collection which was ready more than a decade ago. Mostly poems are small, but some poems are longer, totalling 85. Sehgal is a sensitive poet, who depicts shades of reality, mostly in sad mood, but sometimes in cheerful mood, he wishes to resist, but admits having no strength to resist. He is good poet after Kumar Vikal from Chandigarh, but does not reach the level of genuine poetry of Kumar Vikal.
- Arshi, Prache, Unsent Letters (Poems), 2023, Norfon, pages 112, Price 250/ Rupees
These are innocent feelings of love and affection turned into poetry by the poet Prache, who has described these letters from a “Soulfully Yours” person or poet. Back cover of the book describes these poems as ‘some soul-stirring conversations, some unsaid words and unshared feelings navigate their way in form of unsent letters to embrace the grace.’
Poet Prache has been born in Rajasthan, brought up in Haryana, married in Punjab and settled in Mumbai-the real metropolis city of the world, where multiple cultures merge and yet keep their own identity as well. She lost her mother and father rather early in life, which left a void, as they were the core of her person. She started her career as a college lecturer but shifted to Mumbai as screen writer, married to a screen writer and director, she is now deep into screen writing but her quest for life, its meaning makes her restless soul to try her hand in creative writing. She began with a novel-Second Chance in 2022 and has come out with the poetry collection-Unsent Letters in 2023.
It was during the worst days of pandemic Covid in June 2020, when the poet felt the urge to express herself. She was overwhelmed with emotions, her reasoning was blurred and her longings were shattered and she had some unanswered questions in her mind, which led to her expression in this sensitive poetry. As writing also serves as catharsis, so the poet has discovered her true self and the poetic expression has liberated her, which itself is an achievement for the poet at least.
The small book has space of one page each to one poem, thus in 108 pages, there are 107 pages and page 108 poem, if you can describe it as a poem is from the person, whom letters have been sent-the title of poem is-Letter from You and the poem is=Still writing…
This is a poetry of innocent but strong emotions of love which wishes to be requited with love, but which remains thirsty for love. Love is such an emotion, which can be very strong and passionate like a whirlwind, but it could be very soft and patient as well, just wishing for a touch of affection and warmth. Passionate and strong forms of love as emotion can be very constructive or destructive, but soft and patient form of love could be depressive, if not responded to, yet could bloom and flourish with a little of warm response. Prache the poet has deep feelings of love, but which is soft and patient, which waits for some warmth but remains somewhat wanting. She has imaginative desire of a person, unknown but wished one, like the very first poem-Graffiti-she says-‘I have never met you in person/But I wish to embody your essence’
There is an ideal in poet’s imagination, but ideals are hardly found in life. What one imagines as ideal, sometime from art forms, that too proves hollow in real life! And yet poet still wishes as in one of the short but beautiful poem of the collection-Conversations- ‘Of all the worldly pleasures/I will always choose/late night soulful conversations with you/under the starlit sky’. This is the core of poet’s romantic desires, which takes the form of poetry. In a poem Wildfire, the poet shows the passionate form of love also, when she says-‘Every time I tried to crush and burn the desire/it turned out to be a wild fire/’
One of the poem is the title of collection-Unsent Letter, this whole poem is the crux of this whole collection-‘Ah! These unsent letters are not merely words/ These have taken a lot from my being, my soul! /Strewn with fragment of my beating heart/Jagged emotions as sharp as a dart! The poem makes it clear that why and how this poetry has been born. It is born out of a longing for love, which should be understood by the person, whom the letters were to be sent. And letters are sent through poetry, but these don’t remain private letters as the spirit of letters express. These are purely a private sense of emotions, which needed to be requited in soulful conversations in starlit nights, but which have taken the form of sensitive poetry.
All forms of creativity, especially poetry is more of reflective of emotions, feelings and sometimes unresolved matters of love. In the wider sense poetry also reflects upon social issues leaving aside personal sufferings. But both type of poetry is fine, when it is expressed artistically. Some of the titles of poems like-It is complicated, one-sided relationship etc. indicate to the reality of post technology age, where human relations get more controlled by technology rather than emotions. That can also lead to expression of poetry of different kind-unrequited longing. A couple holding smart phone in their hands while lying close to each other on same bed but with reverse side, indifferent to the partner lying next!
Prache Arshi is poet of old sensibilities, writing simple and understandable words to express emotions and desires in simple phrases, but sometimes leading to its complicated results. Hope she comes up with more poetry with complicated emotional situations of life and not trying to hide behind the divine, which is an elusive escape from reality!
September/October 2023
- Sandhu, Ikroop, Inqilab Zindabad-Graphic biography of Bhagat Singh, 2023, Yoda Press, 160 pages
This is first graphic novel or biographic narration of Bhagat Singh life, done in authentic and aesthetic manner. Needs to be discussed in detail. Will have to leave for another time!
6, Sanyal Sanjeev, Revolutionaries: The Other story of how India won its freedom, 2023, HarperCollins India, Delhi, pages 364
Sanjeev Sanyal is grandson of famous revolutionary Sachindernath Sanyal and part of Prime Minister advisory council. He has tried to interpret revolutionary movement from rightist angle, even distorting his own grandfather’s ideas, undermining Bhagat Singh and HSRA advance socialist thinking and tried to fit the narrative in present regime’s favour. Cant go into details of this book as well.
7.Timmi, Paramjit, Memoirs in Hindi manuscript
I wrote its preface in Hindi as I was sent manuscript in Hindi, but its book form has come out in Punjabi translation.
मेरी ज़मीन मेरा आसमान: ( 1984-कुछ सवाल कुछ जवाब ) परमजीत टिम्मी की कथात्मक शैली में आत्मकथा * `
चमन लाल**
मेरी ज़मीन मेरा आसमान परम्जीत टिम्मी ने 1984 की घट्नायो को केंद्र में रख कर अपने जीवन में आये ज़बरदस्त तूफान की कथा को शबद्बद्ध किया है. 1984 का वर्ष जारज आर्वेल के बहुत पहिले लिखे क्लासिक उपन्यास 1984 भारत में तो जैसे एक भविष्यवाणी की तरह सिद्ध हुआ. हालांकि ये उपन्यास साम्यवाद विरोध के रुप में लिखा गया था, लेकिन ये बढ्ते फासिस्ट समाज का प्रतिरूप बन गया. ये रचना आत्म कथात्मक शैली के रुप में उपन्यास भी प्रतीत होती है, आरम्भिक दो अध्याय तो उपन्यास का ही प्रभाव देते हैं, बाद में घटनाक्रम इतना यथार्थ आधारित हो जाता है कि आत्मकथा का रुप फिर अधिक प्रभावी हो जाता है. 150 प्रष्ठ से अधिक की ये रचना पांच अध्यायों में बंटी है. उपन्यास का आरम्भ -एक शहर एक हाद्सा से शुरु होता है.अमन यानी अमनदीप सिंह बीस साल बाद अपने प्यारे शहर डाल्टनगंज जा रहा था जिसे उसे 1984 में इंदिरा गांधी की हत्या के बाद छोड्ना पडा था. उपन्यास के शुरु में अमन के मन में एक सवाल उठ्ता है-क्या एक सियासी घट्ना इंसानी रिश्तो को एक पल में धवस्त कर सकती है?
` अमन का परिवार विभाजन से भी बहुत पहले व्यापार के सिलसिले में डाल्टनगंज आ गया था. अन्य सिख परिवार भी काफी संख्या में वहां आकर बस गए थे, इसलिए डाल्टनगंज के सामाजिक-राजनीतिक ताने बाने में भी सिख परिवारों का बहुत प्रभाव था. अमन के पिता भी वहां की राजनीतिक गतिविधि में सक्रिय हिस्सा लेते थे और समाजवादी विचारों व् जे पी के आंदोलन से जुड़े थे. लेकिन उनके राजनीतिक विरोधी भी थे, जिन्होंने १९८४ की घटनाओं का इस्तेमाल उन्हें शहर से दरबदर करने में किया. पूरे देश के कुछ शहरों की तरह डाल्टनगंज भी सिख विरोधी दंगों का शिकार हुआ. इस क्षेत्र में तो भारतीय सेना के जवान भी भीड़ के हमलों का शिकार हुए, यद्यपि इन घटनाओं को दबा दिया गया. लेखक ने भी इन घटनाओं को रेखांकित करने में कम दिलचस्पी ली है. जबकि काफी बड़ी संख्या में फौजी जवानों ने इस क्षेत्रों में अपने ऊपर हुए हमलों के विरोध में या तो फ़ौज छोड़ी या बागी हुए. अमन के पिता डाल्टनगंज छोड़ना नहीं चाहते थे, लेकिन बेटों के दबाव में उन्हें घर बेचना पड़ा और दो भाईं रमन और करन के साथ अमन जो सबसे छोटा था भी मोहाली आ गया. वहां करन और रमन ने अपना व्यवसाय स्थापित किया और अमन ने कालेज की पढाई चालू रखी. इसी बीच पंजाबी यूनिवर्सिटी पटियाला में पढ़ते हुए उसे पंजाब पुलिस के टॉर्चर के अनुभव से गुज़रना पड़ा. पुलिस का ये टार्चर अंग्रेज़ों के वक़्त से ही चला आ रहा था और आज भी उसमें कुछ फ़र्क़ नहीं पड़ा है. वैसे दुनिया के बहुत कम देश ऐसे होंगे जहाँ पुलिस या सैनिक बालों के टार्चर की कहानियां सुनने में ना आती हों. अमेरिका ने क्यूबा के एक टापू गुआंटेनामा पर ज़बरदस्ती कब्ज़ा कर उसे दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा टार्चर केंद्र बनाया हुआ है. पंजाब में भी दो केंद्र अमृतसर के यंत्रणा केंद्र व् संगरूर ज़िले का लड्ढा कोठी यंत्रणा केंद्र नक्सल आंदोलन व् बाद में भी नागरिकों पर अमानवीय यंत्रणाएँ देने के लिए बदनाम रहे हैं. १९७०‘ में एक दोस्त कामरेड को गिरफ्तारी के बाद अमृतसर के बदनाम यंत्रणा केंद्र में ले जाया गया था, वहां उसके साथ शारीरिक यंत्रणाओं का जो कई दिन तक दौर चला था, उस पर मैंने उन दिनों पंजाबी में एक कहानी लिखी थी-प्रीखिआ (परीक्षा) जिसमें कामरेड के उस यंत्रणा के दौर का सामना बहादुरी से करने के बाद कहानी लेखक ने उसे परीक्षा में सफल होता दिखाया था. वैसे उस कामरेड को पुलिस, मुठभेड़ दिखा कर क़तल ना कर दे, इसके लिए हाई कोर्ट में उसे पेश करने की अर्ज़ी भी डाली गयी थी. अमन के साथ पुलिस ने जो यंत्रणाएँ देने का सलूक किया और उसके साथ पकडे गए दलबीर को मुठभेड़ में मार डाला गया या कम से काम अमन से अधिक शारीरिक यंत्रणाओं का शिकार उसे होना पड़ा होगा , इसका ब्योरा इस आत्म वृत में नहीं है, जो अगर होता तो अच्छा ही होता. परमजीत टिम्मी इन्हीं सब अनुभवों के बाद जनतांत्रिक अधिकारों के संगठन से जुड़े हैं, जिससे उसके चचेरे भाई व् मेंटर सुखदेव या असल ज़िन्दगी में कुलबीर भी जुड़े हैं. दिलचस्प बात ये है कि अमन जिसकी दोस्ती वाम पंथी सीटू और सम्भवत: सिख उग्रपंथी दलबीर जिसको अमन के साथ ही पकड़ा गया , दोनों के साथ थी. सीटू ने उसे पुलिस द्वारा पकडे जाना देख लिया था और एक हमदर्द सिपाही द्वारा यूनिवर्सिटी अध्यापक सिंगला जो जनतांत्रिक अधिकारों में भी सक्रिय थे, को बाहर से फोन कर सूचित करने से ही अमन की पुलिस के हाथों जल्दी मुक्ति में सहायक हुई. लेकिन शारीरिक यंत्रणाओं के इस अनुभव ने अमन की कच्ची उम्र पर बहुत घातक प्रभाव डाला. वह युनिवर्सिटी की पढ़ाई बीच में छोड़ कर अपने पिता के पास चला आया और जब तक अपने दिल पर पड़े इस भारी बोझ को पिता से बयान कर और उनकी गोद में सर रख कर जी भर कर रोकर अपने को हल्का न कर लिया , तब तक उसको जीवन में आगे बढ़ने का रास्ता नज़र नहीं आया. सुखदेव इस बीच दिल्ली आ गया था, कहने को व्यवसाय के नाम पर, पर उसका मन सामाजिक कार्यों में ही लगता था. वह एक जनवादी अधिकार संगठन में काम करने लगा था. इस बीच पंजाब के हालत बिगड़ने लगे थे और उसी में ३१ अक्तूबर १९८४ का दिन अमन के शब्दों में भारत के इतिहास का वह दर्दनाक क्षण था जिसे पंजाब से बहार का सिख समुदाय कभी न भूल पायेगा. सुखदेव उस दिन दिल्ली से अपने शहर के लिए ट्रेन पर चढ़ा था, लेकिन उसके साथ कुछ वैसा ही सुलूक भीड़ ने किया जैसा अमन के साथ पुलिस ने किया था. पुलिस ने सोच समझ कर योजनाबद्ध तरीके से किया था , लेकिन ट्रेन पर हमला करने वाली भीड़ ने आवेश में बिना योजना से सिख मुसाफिरों को यंत्रणाएँ दीं , जिनमें सिख फौजी भी शामिल थे. परमजीत ने सिख फ़ौजिओं के पक्ष पर कम ज़ोर दिया है, उनके बारे में चलताऊ ढंग से बात की है, जबकि १९८४ के सिख विरोधी दंगों के दौरान, सिख फ़ौजिओं पर हमले भी बड़ी घटना थे जिसने तीन दिन बाद फ़ौज को सड़कों पर उतरे जाने व् फिर दंगों के अचानक रुक जाने में भूमिका निभाई थी. सुखदेव के साथ हुए एक धर्म विशेष की भीड़ के भयंकर और लगभग जानलेवा सलूक के बाद भी सुखदेव के मन में किसी धर्म विशेष के प्रति नफरत की भावना पैदा नहीं हुई, बल्कि उसे बचाने में भूमिका भी सुखदेव के उसी धर्म विशेष के दोस्तों की ही रही. यही चीज़ जब अमन को सुखदेव ने समझाई तब उसे समझ में आया कि ये दंगे लोगों को भावनात्मक स्तर पर भड़का कर करवाए जाते हैं.
सुख्देव और अपने कुच्छ दोस्तों की प्रेरणा से अमन बीस साल बाद फिर अपने दोस्त रोहन के साथ डाल्ट्नगंज पहुंच ही गया व वहाँ अपने दोस्तों के साथ रह कर अपने बचपन की यादों को फिर ताज़ा किया. स्कूल की आंटी , पान वाला, कालेज अध्यापक व लेखक मिश्र जी, सब के साथ मिल कर उसे फिर वही अपनेपन का एहसास हुआ, जिससे वह बीस साल वंचित रहा था. पंजाब में रहते हुए उसके पिता जी को भी बिहार के गांव के रिक्शा चलाने वाले से मिलने पर संतोष हुया था. अमन और रमन को भी लुधियाना में बिहारी ढाबे पर बैठ कर चैन मिलता है. अमन के पिता जी व भाई रमन की असमय देहावसान का कारण अमन को उनका डाल्टन गंज से उखड्ने में लगता है. खुद अमन को अपनी डाल्टन गंज यात्रा ऐसी लगती है जैसे उसकी ज़िंदगी से दो दशक विलीन हो गये हो और वह दोबारा अस्सी के दशक में पहुँच गया हो.
उपन्यास या आत्म कथा का अंत शहरयार के इस मानिखेज़ शेर से हुआ है-उजाड्ते हैं जो नादान इसे उजड्ने दो/ कि उजड़ा शहर दुबारा बसा नहीं है क्या
परमजीत टिम्मी के कथात्मक शैली में लिखे ये संस्मरण मन को छुहने वाले तो हैं ही, जीवन अनुभवों से प्राप्त ज्ञान को भी इंगित करते हैं.
*परमजीत टिम्मी पी.यू.डी.आर. दिल्ली के सचिव हैं. ये संस्था पहिले जे.पी. द्वारा स्थापित पी.यू.सी.एल& डी. आर. के नाम से जानी जाती थी. 1977-78 में ये विभाजित होकर पी.यू.सी.एल. और पी.यू.डी.आर नाम से दो अलग संगठन बन गये. 1984 में दिल्ली के सिख विरोधी दंगों के बाद दोनों संगठनों ने मिल कर रिपोर्ट ‘दोषी कौन? निकाली थी, जिसका पंजाबी अनुवाद पंजाब के संगठन ए.एफ.डी.आर. ने निकाला था, जिस पर उस समय की अकाली सरकार ने प्रतिबंध लगाया था, जो आज तक हटाया नहीं गया
**चमन लाल जवाहर लाल नेहरु युनिवर्सिटी से सेवा मुक्त प्रोफेसर हैं और उपरोक्त वर्णित पंजाब और दिल्ली के दोनों संगठनों से जुडे रहे हैं.
8. P. Sainath, The Last Heroes: Foot soldiers of Indian Freedom, 2022, Penguin Random House, Pages 306
This is one of very good books, which needs to be discussed in detail. I wish I could write about this book at least!
November-December 2023
9. Kataria Madhvi, Andekhti Ankhen (Hindi Poems), 2023, Aadhar Prakshan Panchkula, Page 82, price 100/
This is first poetry collection of now retired IAS officer of Punjab cadre Madhvi Kataria, who happens to bea daughter of former Punjab Congress President late Virender Kataria. It is dedicated to her husband and son Amit and Asad and other loved ones. Interestingly, its preface is written by her son Asad, who is a student in Canada, but spent sometime in JNU also. Interestingly short preface is written by Asad in English, wich has been translated in Hindi by three well known literary figures-Purva , Rustom and Teji Grover. There are five sections of just 82 pages collection, containing 65 poems. These are short but sensitive poems. Madhvi has been keenly involved with freedom struggle history also and has translated Shiv Verma memoirs in English with KJS Waraich. She retired shortly after publishing the collection. Now she may get more time to write poetry or prose or both.
10. Dhingra, Leena, Exhumed-(Biography of Madan Lal Dhingra)
Again, a good book published from London, needs an Indian edition. scanned through pages of Exhumed, reading the Prologue, Epilogue, and a few more pages fully. It looks to be a nice but different type of biography, her experience of films/tv serials has made her write the biography as a narrative script. Short and interesting titles of short chapters, along with narrating family history, make this biography of Madan Lal Dhingra a unique one penned by his own descendant, who never met him, as she could not have met him, born many years after his execution but through family history knew almost everything about him.
There is an error in the epilogue, if you have seen Udham Singh’s trial papers, he never referred to himself as Ram Muhammad Singh Azad, he referred to him as only Muhammad Singh Azad and signed many court papers as MS Azad. Punjabi University Patiala has published some of those papers and Udham Singh Trust Birmingham has those records. Bharat Bhushan can show you those papers.
In the mid-1970s, the Government of India, inspired by the Irish Government’s successful petitioning for the return of the remains of Sir Roger Casement from Pentonville, lobbied for the return of Indian freedom fighters Udham Singh and Madan Lal buried there.
In 1976, Madan Lal’s remains were exhumed and returned to India for a hero’s welcome. A ‘D’notice forbade its reporting in the British press.
Madan Lal Dhingra was my great uncle. From an early age I was haunted by his story. Described variously as murderer, great patriot, revolutionary, martyr, misguided youth, I wanted to know – but I feared to know. I too had a secret story that no one talked about – the partition of India.
On August 17, 1947, exactly 38 years after Madan Lal’s execution (on the same date), the Radcliffe Line of Partition, demarcating the boundaries of India and Pakistan was revealed. My parents were in Paris where my father was temporarily working. Suddenly, they lost their city, home, job, friends and there was nowhere to go back to. Returning “home” became the lifelong aspiration.
In 1976, the year Madan Lal’s body was exhumed, I had started to “exhume” his story from the archives and locations in London. I would do this in fits and starts, making tentative attempts on days off work and holidays, with long gaps. It was a painful process that I would often abandon.
Then I was told “When you find out your family history you find out about yourself.”
That resonated. I made it a project that eventually manifested in my book, Exhumation. Part memoir, part history, it reveals the impact of colonial rule on a family through the course of the 20th century. But, for some reason, I resisted putting the book out.
Some time later in 2018, I was offered a part in an episode of Dr Who called The Demons of the Punjab about the Partition of India. I played a 90-year-old Pakistani woman, who has a secret she does not want to talk about: partition. When I watched it on TV I experienced a release from my inherited trauma. This enabled me to revisit and rework my manuscript.
My book was released on August 17, 2021. August 17 has a threefold significance for me: commemoration, commiseration, and celebration. Commemoration of the sacrifice of my courageous ancestor, commiseration for the cataclysmic trauma of partition. And celebration that I was able to wade through the layers of trauma and release the book.
• Exhumation: The Life and Death of Madan Lal Dhingra is available from http://www.hoperoadpublishing.com and on Amazon.
• Leena Dhingra is a writer and actor. Her first novel, Amritvela, was published in 1988. As an actor, her credits include East is East, The Bill, Prime Suspect, EastEnders, Coronation Street, Casualty, Doctor Who and Ackley Bridge.
Bordering on madness
AUGUST 17 is the 76th anniversary of the partition of India, the actual date on which the Radcliffe line demarcated the borders of India and Pakistan and overnight, 15 million people were dislocated and more than one million people massacred. Its traumatic impact continues to this day. My family never recovered. A week before she died, aged 99, my mother asked: “Are you taking me back to Lahore?”
I write as a way to untangle myself from that inherited trauma. The quote below from an anonymous writer on the website referenced below, says it all:
“It was one of the most dunderheaded moves in an imperial history chockfull with them: the partition of India. Its population distribution was such that there was no line that could neatly divide up the subcontinent. Yet, a boundary commission was given a mere six weeks to carve a Muslim-majority state from British India … More ridiculous still, the commission was led by a British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been in the East before. Radcliffe just drew some lines on the map without realising that his demarcation line went straight through thickly populated areas, villages and sometimes even through a single house with some rooms in one country and others in the other…”
11. Singh, Megha, Naxalbadi Lahir ate Punjabi Patarkari(Punjabi), 2022, Chandigarh, Saptrishi Publication, Pages 252, Price 320/ rupees
The book is a pleasant surprise, took me back to seventies, when I was part of this left journal’s cultural movement. Some things were even knew for me, as Harbhajan Sohi’s meeting with P Sundariya before they were expelled from CPM. It seems, to large extent splits have occurred in Communist movement by a majority group expelling minority dissenting view holders and not trying to allow open democratic discussion inside party or group. It is a good study.
12. Sharma, R R(Editor), Nehru’s Luminous Legacy: The Jawaharlal Nehru University, Fifty years and Thereafter, Foreword Alagh, Yogender K, 2024, Delhi, Aakar Books, Pages 468, Price 1495/ Rupees
This book was long awaited, which includes my article/memoir also among 35 contributors mostly retired or present faculty from JNU, but some old JNU alumnus also. The book was jointly conceived by Prof. YK Alagh and R R Sharma, but Prof. Alagh passed away prior to its publication, but his short memoir is there and volume is dedicated to his memory. There are many extended, somewhat superfluous narrations also, but many articles/memoirs are good.
13. Acharjee, Sonali, Look Up :Social Media and the Addiction, No one is Talking about, 2016, Delhi, Hay House, Pages 240
As many times I had been feeling and thinking, many of my observations about social media platforms are put into this small volume on the development of social media, largely based on new technology, but has got dangerous proportions, making people addictive to it. I myself wished to get rid or at least control my time on use of this new media. Perhaps the book will expedite the process. Perhaps, not coming out, but spending very limited time just for sharing objective things like journals articles or photographs as documents shall be enough. Wish to use more email and blog than facebook posts all the time. This is a good book to start deaddictive process.
14. Sirdar Kapoor Singh, Bikhu Mahi Amrit (Ed. Baldev Singh), 2023(Sixth ed.), Nabha, Preet Publications, pages 120
This volume is collection of Kapoor Singh articles/speeches as MP/MLA and few more, along with editor Baldev Singh’s own few articles. Kapoor Singh was very harsh critic of Akali leadership, especially of Sant Fateh Singh. Few of his observations are good as Bhagat Singh was not a Sikh hero, but national hero.
15. Guha Somenath, Bagha Jatin: The Revolutionary, who Terrified the British, 2022, Delhi, Srishati Publishers, Pages 145
Bagha Jatin was famous revolutionary from Bengal in pre-Bhagat Singh period, who tried to organise armed rebellion against British colonial power around the time Ghadar movement took place. Ras Behari Bose was his mentor too. He was a selfless but physically strong revolutionary, he killed tiger with hands, so he got title Bagha-tiger killer.
16. Juss, Satvinder, Bhagat Singh : A Life in Revolution, 2022, Gurgaon, Pengins Random House India, pages 463, Price 999/
This is also a good book, though with some false and exaggerated claims about first publication of some letters/documents collected from Bhagat Singh case files in Punjab Secretariate Lahore. Wanted to write detailed note, but it is not possible now, as the book may have to be read again. Have to leave for another time.
17. Bhalerao, Abhijeet, The Man who avenged Bhagat Singh, 2023, Delhi, Penguins Random HouseIndia, Pages365, price
Was asked to write Preface, which was used as one of blurbs. The writer himself spent lot of money to promote the book, I participated into one of discussions at Gurgaon in January 2024 on it.
While the story built on Baikunth Shukal avenging Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev’s execution is well-knitted and largely built on memoirs of revolutionaries and some authentic sources, there are some things which could have been discussed earlier like HSRA formed on 8&9 September Delhi was focussed more on building mass movements. Still, the novel focuses more on dacoities and details few of them, which means the whole idea of Bhagat Singh’s ideological perspective of fighting for building socialism on the lines of Lenin gets underplayed.
Some factual errors have also crept in-like Bhagat Singh’s statement on the Assembly bomb case denied firing any shot, though they had pistols with them. The novel refers to one person firing shots and another throwing leaflets.
Ten-year-old Yash, later editor of Milap Jalandhar is mentioned as Yashpal, mixing him with Hindi novelist Yashpal, who planned a bomb on the Viceroy train. There are references in memoirs and interviews that this action was planned by Yashpal, which was opposed by Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, Yashpal could get Bhagwati Charan Vohra support, who wrote Philosophy of the Bomb in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s write up Cult of the Bomb in his paper Young India. Gandhi also carried its rebuttal in the form of the Philosophy of the bomb. which Yashpal claims that it was joint writing of Bhagwati and Yashpal.
“Abhijeet Bhalerao’s novel “The Man who avenged Bhagat Singh” is a fictionalised account of Baikunth Shukal story, a school teacher from Bihar, who was hurt deeply by the execution of Bhagat Singh. Phanindernath Ghosh, a central committee member revolutionary of HSRA, from Bettiah, Bihar turned approver and helped British police destroy the revolutionary organisation. Baikunth Shukal, a follower of Yogender Shukla, a true revolutionary and comrade of Bhagat Singh avenged the execution of Bhagat Singh by killing the approver Phanindernath Ghosh, handsomely rewarded by British police with 50 acres of land and more. There has been a tradition of creative literature in the form of poetry, plays, short stories, novels etc in many Indian languages on revolutionaries, but in English most books were mostly biographies or analytical books on Bhagat Singh’s ideas and actions. Now in English, which has become as much an Indian language, creative books on Bhagat Singh and revolutionaries are being written. A graphic novel or biography on Bhagat Singh’s life and ideas had been published recently and now Abhijeet Bhalerao’s novel has come out having 30 chapters in nearly 200 hundred pages. Though the novel is not based on Bhagat Singh directly but shows how much Bhagat Singh was loved by Indian people, that the betrayers of the revolutionary movement could not enjoy the fruits of British rewards and had to pay the price of betrayal with their lives. The real saga of Bhagat Singh is so fascinating that when some related events come out in narrative form, that becomes even more charming, so is Abhijit Bhalerao’s novel, which brings out the role of some neglected heroes of freedom struggle like Yogender and Baikunth Shukls!”
Review
Year 2023 has proved to be less of a reading year, even lesser of writing, even short notes on read books, which may continue in 2024, though reading may improve, but not taking notes on books.
हमारे विश्वविद्यालय एक आँखें खोलने वाला उपन्यास
हमारे विश्वविद्यालय एक आँखें खोलने वाला उपन्यास है, जिसमें एक नव स्थापित केंद्रीय विश्वविद्यालय के प्रथम कुलपति रहे अभय मौर्य ने हमारी शिक्षा व्यवस्था में आ चुकी तथा और भी पतन की ओर जा रही स्थिति का यथार्थ बयान किया है। इसमें हाल के वर्षों में जे एन यू व हैदराबाद के छात्रों पर हुए भयंकर दमन और अकादमिक स्वतंत्रता पर हो रहे आघातों का भी सटीक चित्रण हुआ है और अगर कोई ईमानदार और आदर्शवादी कुलपति छात्रों, अध्यापकों व कर्मचारियों के हितों का ध्यान रखते हुए उन्हें बेहतर काम के लिए प्रेरित करें तो उसके रास्ते में कैसी बाधाएँ आती हैं, किस प्रकार उसे राजनीतिक दबावों का सामना करना पड़ता है, यहाँ तक कि कुछ दक्षिण पंथी धार्मिक संगठन उसकी जान के भी शत्रु हो जाते हैं, को स्पष्टता से उसकी पूरी क्रूरता के साथ वर्णित किया है। लेकिन इस भयावह समय में समाज के भीतर ही प्रतिरोधी शक्तियाँ भी हैं, जो भले ही संख्या बल में कम हों, परंतु उनमें नैतिक बल और साहस अधिक है। दक्षिण पंथी उग्र धार्मिकता के दमनकारी दौर में किस प्रकार भगत सिंह और डॉ अंबेडकर के विचार इस उग्र व फाँसी हिंसक हमले के प्रतिरोध के लिए युवा विद्यार्थी वर्ग की प्रेरणा व ताकत बनते हैं और व्यवस्था के भीतर से ही कुछ मानवीय अधिकारी इन युवायों की ढाल बनते हैं, इसका आशावादी चित्रण भी हुआ है। कुलपति इन तमाम दबावों का हिम्मत से सामना करते हैं, अपने सौम्य व सहयोगी स्वभाव से संस्थान के विद्यार्थियों, अध्यापकों व कर्मचारियों का समर्थन हासिल करते हैं, और इन दमनकारी शक्तियों के सामने न झुक कर, सम्मान के साथ अपना कार्यकाल समाप्त करते हैं। उपन्यासकार निराशा के इस दौर में भी उम्मीद का दामन नहीं छोड़ते और कई पतित हो चुके पात्रों के हृदय परिवर्तन के कुछ अतिरिक्त आदर्शवाद और आशावाद से साहिर लुधियानवी के गीत से उपन्यास समाप्त करते है-वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी…
Lest we forget: A ‘prelude’ to Jallianwalla Bagh massacre
Indian politicians in Canada and India
Indian politicians in Canada and India: A study in contrast | Chandigarh News – The Indian Express
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It was in March 2020 that the Indo-Canadian Workers Association in Brampton sent me an invitation to deliver a few lectures on Shaheed Bhagat Singh in some cities of Canada. However, as the pandemic Covid-19 spread world over in mid-March, the programs were cancelled at the last moment, as were in India too! The invitation materialised three years later in March 2023.! While as part of the series, the lectures were held in Vancouver also. During my stay in the Vancouver area, it was in April first week, that along with a few friends of Punjabi origin, I wished to and visit Victoria, the capital of British Columbia province of Canada, which is popularly called Beautiful British Columbia (BBC)! We were invited to visit the Assembly Hall of the province by an MLA of Filipino origin, Mable Elmore, who was Vice President of the Drivers Union at one time and a four-time MLA. During my last visit in year 2011, an MLA of Punjabi origin Harry Bains had invited a few friends and we were entertained there in the Assembly Hall by Raj Chauhan, Jagrup Brar and Harry Bains, who took us around the assembly hall. At that time also, I had wished that if there could be some reference made to Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Assembly proceedings as we went around. This time to my pleasant surprise, it did happen, that too, due to a Filipino-origin MLA! To fulfil my wish, Kirpal Bains, a Punjabi-origin friend, who remained President of a union, of which Mable Elmore was Vice President, arranged an invitation from his comrade and MLA Mable Elmore to visit the assembly with friends. So, five of us Kirpal Bains, Dr. Sadhu Singh, Iqbal Purewal, Santokh Singh and me, took a ferry from Vancouver and reached Victoria, where the British Columbia Assembly is located. Both Kirpal Bains and Dr Sadhu Singh had their illustrious academic career in Punjab earlier. We were received at the gate of the Assembly by MLA Mable Elmore herself, who came out from the assembly’s ongoing proceedings. While she took us around the assembly hall complex, we met some ministers of British Columbia holding their own files without any staff to carry around. One of the ministers we met, was Niki Sharma, the law minister. I was carrying a few books on Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Hindi and was told that Niki Sharma might know Hindi, as she is from the Jalandhar area background, but she did not know Hindi. We were pleasantly surprised to see Raj Chauhan as Speaker of the British Columbia assembly, in 2011, he was a minister. He received us warmly in the speaker’s chamber. As I presented one of my books on Bhagat Singh to him, he invited us to watch the proceedings of the Assembly in the afternoon session, which he was to chair. We were entertained on a nutritious lunch with all kinds of food, in the Assembly Canteen where we met Jagrup Brar, who was minister this time and also joined briefly by MLA Jinny Sims, who was, an MP of federal parliament in 2011. Jinny’s name is Joginder from the Doaba area and her father was a Communist activist in Punjab. While talking over lunch, she shared our concern about what was being done by Khalistani elements in Canada and Amritpal and others in the UK and other countries.
In the afternoon session of the Assembly, while we were seated in the visitor’s gallery, we were introduced to the Assembly members as special visitors. While I was introduced to the Assembly by ex-Minister Jinny Sims as a researcher on Bhagat Singh, by adding that Shaheed Bhagat Singh was India’s greatest hero of the freedom struggle. Mable Elmore introduced the other four friends Kirpal Bains, Sadhu Singh, Iqbal Purewal and Santokh Singh, mentioning Kirpal Bains as her mentor in the trade union! The proceedings were recorded and I was happy that at least it was possible this time to get Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s name mentioned in Assembly records as an icon of the Indian freedom struggle. While going through the assembly complex, I clicked the photograph of Ujjal Dosanjh, who had remained Premier of British Columbia province once, later a federal minister too. (Ujjal Dosanjh too joined in a dinner held during my stay in Surrey with lively chat on drinks and food! He was in Chandigarh recently to release one of his autobiographical books, as he left politics for writing. He is the grandson of a Ghadrite revolutionary from the Hoshiarpur district). I presented a Brochure of Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre New Delhi to be displayed in Assembly library. While Mable Elmore came out with us to the Assembly gate to say goodbye! I was told that on the next day of the Assembly session, Mable again made mention of Shaheed Bhagat Singh in the context of a race being organised in martyr’s name in Vancouver!
I was wondering how a system in different countries makes people of different backgrounds conduct themselves in accordance with the country they adopt to live in. All MLAs and ministers of Punjabi /Indian origin keep coming over to India and see how their counterparts in the Indian parliamentary system behave like feudal lords. While MLAs/ministers of Indian origin do all their work themselves, buying tea or coffee too by standing in queue, the Indian feudal-minded parliamentarians cannot be even approached by common or even somewhat privileged Indians! Aam Aadmis (Common People in literal translation), become so Khas (Special), that even their close friends earlier are not responded to in any manner. I know one or two Cabinet ministers and senior functionaries of Punjab, who once took me to various monumental places relating to the Ghadar party like Stockton, Sacramento and San Francisco in the USA, will not even respond to my phone/Whatsapp calls/msgs or emails, so is in Delhi Aam turns Khas after getting power!
Ironically Governments in the centre and states in the Indian Parliamentary system, find it difficult to appreciate the truly Multi-Cultural Canadian Parliamentary system, though still a dominion of the erstwhile British empire, where ministers including Prime Minister and Chief Ministers, MPs and MLAs live like other citizens of the country, one could find them in markets, carrying their own grocery, driving their own vehicles, standing in ques with all other citizens, allowing peoples peaceful protests, accepting their genuine demands without taking the sacrifices of people, like 700 farmers lives during recent farmers struggle! Indian Govt. bullies the Canadian government like international feudal lords. Canada itself has lost more than 300 of its citizen’s lives, due to Khalistani elements causing an air crash few years ago, and a grand monument stands in the Vancouver area, with all the names of aeroplane crash victims caused by Khalistanis, so is a monument built at Vancouver waterfront in memory of 376 Kamagatamaru ship passengers including Hindu-Sikh-Muslims all, who were not allowed to land and reverted back to India after two months in 1914! Canadian Govt. has recorded an apology for that in its Parliament!
I also wonder that after becoming citizens of Canada/other countries, why people from Indian background keep harping more on Indian situation than on the situation of their citizenship adopted countries! One can understand showing concern about the Indian situation from a humanitarian angle, but that should be for any country’s situation! Irony is the Indian Govt, while being critical of Canadian/other Governments. for not checking protests against the Indian govt. by Indian background people for its oppression inside India, they use similar Indian background people for promoting a present brand of Indian Govt. Thus, Indian Prime Minister Modi has been built as a ‘hero’ by the same type of Indian background people in the USA, UK and Australia, but this govt. gets stung when the same type of Indian background people criticise or protest against Modi Govt.! While no action was taken at the replay and eulogising Nathu Ram Godse for shooting Mahatma Gandhi, by a Hindu fundamentalist woman in Aligarh, action is demanded against some Sikhs in Canada replaying and eulogising Sikh bodyguards of Indira Gandhi shooting her! Both these actions in public are reprehensible, yet demanding action against Canadian Sikhs and not taking any action against Nathu Ram Godse’s followers at home! This is the hypocrisy of first order!
*Chaman Lal is a retired Professor from JNU and Honorary Advisor Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre, Delhi , has been in Canada recently for a lecture series on Shaheed Bhagat Singh. Whatsapp 9868774820, email Chamanlal.jnu@gmail.com
Tributes to Prof. Brinsely Samaroo
On 9th July Prof. Brinsely Samaroo passed away in Trinidad and Tobago at the age of 83 years. I lost a dear and best friend during my stay at The University of the West Indies (UWI) as visiting Professor in Hindi on deputation during 2010-11.
Prof. Samaroo from Indian background had studied at Hindu College for a degree in History. He proudly claimed to be a student of Prof. Bipan Chandra, who was then teaching at Hindu College before JNU was established. I was not known to Prof. Samaroo, and only after joining UWI in late October 2010, I came to know about him. He had been a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Senate and remained Minister during Prime Minister Basudeo Pandey’s Government. But more than a politician, his heart was in academics. He remained Head of the Department of History at UWI and most of his students are still teaching in various colleges and Universities of Trinidad and Tobago. I might have met him in November 2010 and we became fast friends, though he was much elder than me. There are many occasions when we were together. Prof. Samaroo invited me to present a paper at an international conference The Global South Asian Diaspora in June 2011, where I presented a paper on V S Naiupal’s Perception of India. In those days, DP Tripathy, a member of Rajya Sabha from the Nationalist Congress party(NCP), who was earlier JNU Students Union President from the Student Federation of India(SFI), was bringing out a serious academic journal Think India. Think India was bringing out an issue of Indian Diaspora, I spoke to DPT about the papers of the UWI conference, and while not all papers could reach; Ramprasaud Tiwari and mine papers were published in that issue. Ramprasaud Tiwari received his issue, but he wished a copy be sent to Brinsley Samaroo, it took a long time, but Samaroo received its copy. DPT as he was popularly known among the JNU fraternity, too left a few years ago.
When a lecture on Bhagat Singh was organised at UWI, he chaired that session. He took me to a function where the Former President of Trinidad Zaliyahar’s biography was released by Prime Minister Kamla Bissesar. Incidentally on that occasion, I got the feeling of Kamla Bissesar being under the influence of spirits, which was a common talk in Trinidad. My new year 2011 was spent at his Mayoro Beach residence, where he had invited a few personal friends for a new year celebration. Where all guests had a sea bath in the backyard of his house backyard and drinks and food. Even on the last day of my stay in Trinidad on 31st December 2011, he took me around the places, which I had missed visiting during my one-year-plus stay. He took me to Siparia La Divina church and temple, and to the Sugar Factory Museum, before dropping me with some gifts. In fact, during my family’s visit in June 2011, he brought some special gifts. The last email I received from him was on 30th October 2022, while responding to my article in Newsclick on Indian indentured labour in the Caribbean, he wrote to me-
Dear Chaman, MANY THANKS FOR THE research which you have carefully done.THIS complements the pioneering work you have done on Bhagat Singh, with which I am very familiar. Your wide sweep of the girmit story brings in the comparative aspect which is so often bypassed. It contains new information, very useful to those of us who teach and write. Keep up the work and keep in touch. NAMASTE BS
Prof. Brinsely Samaroo lived an enriching life. His research mainly was on Indentured labour from India. He was among those few Indian background people, who had close relations with the Black movement in Trinidad. Trini’s population is a mix of Black African background and Indian background people. Indian background people largely don’t mix with African background people and are relatively more conservative and religion-oriented people. But Prof. Samaroo had participated in mostly African background peoples movements against sugar industry barons. His last book was on Dr Eric Williams, the African background Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, whose book Capitalism and Slavery is considered a classic by political scientists the world over. His death was mourned by African background peoples organisations like NJAC and movement for Social Justice apart from the UWI fraternity.
Ironically I received the belated news of the passing away of Ramprasad Tiwari the Guyanese scholar on the same day-9th July, the day Prof. Brinsley passed away, Tiwari met me at a conference on Global South Asian Diaspora held in June 2011 at the UWI and remained in communication just a few years before he passed away. From my email exchanges, I found how much Tiwari and Brinsley were close to each other. While I got the news of Tiwari’s death at the age of 91 years a day before I got the news of Samaroo passing away at the age of 83 years.
I am sharing some of the photographs of Prof. Brinsely Samaroo from the year 2011 as my tribute to my dear departed friend and scholar of eminence-
Prof. Samaroo at Zalayahar biography release function with First Lady Mrs Zalyahar
Prof. Samaroo at his Mayaro Beach residence
Presenting my books on Bhagat Singh to Prof. Samaroo
Prof. Samaroo shared his thoughts at Bhagat Singh’s lecture
Making Presendtial remarks at the lecture
Prof. Samaroo took me around the Sugar Museum on the last day of my UWI stay
Kare Jahan Daraz Hai’ — A Muslim Family’s Journey From 740 AD to 1947
Relook at a Book: ‘Kare Jahan Daraz Hai’ — A Muslim Family’s Journey From 740 AD to 1947
Chaman Lal | 20 Jan 2023
On Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder’s 95th birth anniversary on January 20, remembering her last classic novel, Kare Jahan Daraz Hai, which is a treat in style and content.
Kare Jahan Daraz Hai (The business of the world goes on), Urdu novel in two parts, bound in one volume, Qurratulain Hyder, Educational Publishing House, Delhi, First edition 2003, Pages 766, in large size, Price: Rs 600.
One of the most significant novels of Urdu writer Qurratulain Haider, Kare Jahan Daraz Hai, is the winner of India’s highest literary award—the Jnanpith. Hyder is known for her magnum opus, Aag ka Darya, which has been translated in many languages. She herself translated it in English as River of Fire.
Kare Jahan Daraz Hai is perhaps her last published novel in her journey which started with Mere Bhi Sanamkhane, her first novel, published in 1949. Incidentally, most of her novels have been translated and are popular in Hindi, except her first and the last.
On my Facebook page comments, I got to know that her novella Sitaharan is also well rated by her readers.
Apart from her above mentioned novels, Hyder has to her credit-Safina-e-Game Dil-1952, Patjhar ki Awaz (a short story collection)-1965, which fetched her the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award in 1967, Roshni ki Raftar –1982, four novellas — Chay ke Bagh, Sitaharan, Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya na Keejo and Dilruba and Aakhri Shab ke Humsafar (Travellers of Last Night).
Hyder, who had to her credit 12 novels and novellas, four collections of short stories, many translations from classic world literature, worked as journalist with magazines Imprint and Illustrated Weekly of India and also taught at Jamia Milia Islamia and some US universities. She was offered a Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1994 and awarded Padma Bhushan in 2005. She also received the Ghalib award and Bahadurshah Zafar award.
Hyder was born on January 20, 1928 to Sajjad Haider Yildarim and Nazar Sajjad Haider, both Urdu writers. She started writing at the age of 11 and wrote her first novel, Mere Bhi Sanamkhane, at the age of 19, which was published, when she was just 21 years old. After Partition, she migrated to Pakistan, from where her most significant novels were published. She returned to India after many years and lived in Delhi. She passed away on August 21, 2007 at the age of 79. She did not marry and was perhaps against the institution of marriage.
Kare Jahan Daraz Hai (the title chosen from a couplet of Iqbal, who along with Faiz Ahmed Faiz is idolised by writers and people in both India and Pakistan) and is an autobiographical novel, focusing on Hyder’s long family history. She has delineated the family history from 740 A.D to almost 20th century-end. The first part of the novel depicts family history from 740 A.D to 1947 in almost 440 pages and 11 chapters, while the post-1947 family history is covered in the second part in 310 pages and five chapters — a total of 16 chapters.
It was in 1962, while visiting her ancestral house in Mohalla Sadaat, Nehtor/Nehtur, Bijnor district in Uttar Pradesh, that the idea struck to Hyder to write novel on the history of the place. She goes back to Zaid, her ancestor in 740 A D, who went to Georgia, established their rule in Tabristan , made Tirmiz their nation, and if they had not moved toward Hindustan in 1180 A D from Turkmenia, they would had been part of the then Soviet Union, she writes.
The story begins from the city of Tirmiz and the second part of the chapter moves the story from Jehon to Jamuna when the family comes to the ‘country of Shakuntala’ and settles somewhere near Kumaon and Garhwal. The Tirmizi family gets land there and makes a new beginning. Members of the family serve kings and one member of the family follows Emperor Aurangzeb in his pursuits.
Hyder has collected documents from family and archival sources to write an authenticated history of her family in narration form, which makes it an extremely readable historic/autobiographical novel. In the first chapter itself, the story reaches the 1857 revolt against the British, in which one rebel, Mir Ahmad Ali, from the family joins the rebellion, while the others remain loyal to the British. The narrator cites some events of the rebellion, particularly in Bijnor district, through documents and family stories.
Every chapter has been provided with references in the end, rather unusual for a novel. In the first chapter’s reference, it has been mentioned that Zaid Bin Imam Zean Albadan was martyred in year 744 A D. Mir Ahmad Ali Tirmazi of this family gave his life in the 1857 revolt as he was executed.
The writer refers to river Gagin, passing through Nehtor and going toward Moradabad. In fact, the story of the family from 740 AD to 1857, is just referral, the novel focuses upon 1857-1947 in first part of the novel and 1947-1987 in second part of the novel.
Hyder’s narration is filled with historic references and depiction of nature, like mentioning rivers like Gomati, Ramganga and Ravi, which makes the novel interesting in its style. She refers to her grandparents, but the real story of novel moves from the depiction of her father Sajjad Haider Yildaram and mother Nazar Baqar’s life story from the days of their school to the end of their lives, which carry on in the second part of the novel as well.
The story of Sajjad Hyder is also the story of development of Muslim educational institutions and the story of women’s education among the Muslim community. It is a fascinating story of the development of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) as well, which became the base of enlightenment among Muslims in pre-Partition India.
Hyder’s mother’s development as an Urdu fiction writer and father Yildaram’s development as a diplomat, writer and traveller, create an aura of romance for that period of history. Yildarim was fond of travelling and moved around many countries, particularly in West Asia. Hyder got the thirst for travel from her father and she, too, travelled many parts of the world.
The novel is full of her travelogues as well and particularly interesting is her description of Egypt during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime, changing into a modern nation. Her depiction of the Nile River, Egyptian Mummies, Alexandria, Suez Canal, assertion of independence from the West by Nasser, are all narrated in fascinating style. She describes the geo socio-cultural-natural locale of all places in a manner that transports the reader there.
In the second part of the novel focusses on life in Karachi, where Hyder had migrated with her family. Here she grows into a celebrated writer, who goes through much turmoil as well. There are petty attacks on her writings, she has a casual and carefree temperament, and does not bother about the malicious attacks. She had strong support from friends and family.
Poet Faiz ‘s appreciation and attachment with her family is described so is author Sajjad Zaheer’s underground life in Pakistan mentioned. Hyder spent a lot many years in London. She exposes the Pakistan government’s anti-woman attitude and bureaucratic favouritism.
Affectionately called Ainee Apa, Hyder ‘s return to India was not melodramatic; rather she makes it look casual and matter of fact, does not damn Pakistan, just comes back and faces almost similar struggles as in Pakistan.
This novel seems to have been translated and published in Hindi by Vani Prakashan, Delhi, in Hindi in 2020 at a prohibitive price of Rs 5,000 with an introduction by Gopi Chand Narang, but the same can be downloaded free as a pdf file from Urdu Digest Novels website.
When I read this novel, its Hindi or English translations were not available and, with my too slow speed in reading Urdu, it took me few months to complete it. But, this was the one of the best reads I have done in my life.
The writer retired as professor in Hindi translation from Centre of Indian Languages, JNU, New Delhi; was Dean, Faculty of Languages, at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and at present is honorary advisor at Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre at Delhi Archives. The views are personal.
Patriots, Poets…..
Relook at a Book: Chronicling Independent India and Liberal Values
Chaman Lal | 27 Dec 2022
Selections from Ramanand Chatterjee’s ‘The Modern Review’ has articles by a galaxy of legendary personalities of that period.
Patriots, Poets and Prisoners: Selections from Ramanand Chatterjee’s The Modern Review, 1907-47.
Sen Anikendra, Datta Devangshu and Roy Nilanjna S (Ed).
NOIDA, HarperCollins India, 2016, pages 352
The book carries an introduction by Ramchandra Guha and the collection is dedicated “To independent India and to liberal values, two things that Ramanand Chatterjee fought for.’ The Modern Review journal was started by Ramanand Chatterjee in 1907 and it continued after Chatterjee’s death in 1943. It was one of most influential journal and people involved in freedom struggle, belonging to even revolutionary stream were aware of it and read it. The journal represented the galaxy of writers from Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash to Tagore, Premchand and more.
Guha, in his introduction, underlines the importance of The Modern Review as a journal and Ramanand Chatterjee as editor of the journal. The Foreword is a note by the editors.
The selection begins with an article by Ramanand himself, ‘Towards Home Rule’ and then moves on to other authors selected for this collection–Sister Nivedita, Lala Lajpat Rai, M K Gandhi, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, R S Pandit, Sant Nihal Singh, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Satyendra Chandra Mitra, C F Andrews, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Verrier Alwin, Premchand, Sita Devi, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Albert Einstein, Roman Rolland, Nirmal Kumar Bose, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Atul Home. The book ends with ‘1947: Dawn of A New Age’ with Nehru’s first address from Red Fort as Prime Minister of Independent India on August 15,1947.
The book has varied forms of selection, mostly these are political writings of eminent Indian freedom struggle, but it has a fair sprinkling of literature by eminent writers of that time, which includes translations from other languages, such as Premchand is translated from Hindi. Apart from fiction, poetry is also included.
Ramanand Chatterjee also brought out Prabasi in Bengali and Vishal Bharat in Hindi from his press in Calcutta. Vishal Bharat was edited among others by Banarsi Das Chaturvedi for some time.
The book has many interesting and historic writings included in the collection as debate between Gandhi and Lajpat Rai, Bose’s story of escape, Nehru’s self-critical write up in the fictitious name of Chanakya. Interviews of Einstein conducted by Tagore, of Romain Rolland by Subhas Bose and of Gandhi by Nirmal Bose. Subhas Bose and Nehru memoirs of Europe are literary in style.
Bhagat Singh had written to Ramanand Chatterjee from the Lahore jail in response to his editorial about the Inqilab Zindabad slogan, which was published in The Tribune. But, it seems the letter was not published or did not reach The Modern Review. It would have been good if the editors and Guha had cleared that. In fact, the inclusion of that letter would have made the volume richer.
In totality, the collection is a pleasant read.
The writer is Former Dean, Faculty of Languages, Panjab University Chandigarh and Honorary Advisor, Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre.
The criminal of Partition Genocide? Lord Mountbatten!
The Tribune on 15th January published this important article by Vappla Balachandran, I responded to it for the Letters column, which was not carried by the paper, but I am posting my response here in the context of this article.
My response is posted here
Dear Editor,
I was pleasantly surprised to read Vappala Balachandran’s article-‘British army could have prevented Partition Riots’
Years after reading many books on the partition of India and the Indian freedom struggle, It is my considered opinion that Lord Mountbatten was the real criminal of the partition riots, which took a toll on nearly one million human lives and ten million refugees taking shelter in either India or Pakistan, apart from untold and cruelest sufferings by women in the form of rapes in public and mutilation of their body parts. This was not limited to one particular religious group. All three Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs suffered in equal measures, though they blame each other. Mountbatten had time until June 1948 to complete the partition process, though partition was avoidable also. But the peaceful transition of migration of religious groups under military supervision was possible if religious minorities in respective newly formed countries were to take place as suggested by Dr. Ambedkar or a viable and strictly implementable agreement between two incoming Governments of India and Pakistan was to be made under colonial government to ensure the peaceful life for minorities in both the countries. But Mountbatten rather than bothering about the human lives of Asians was protective of British colonial interests, so he took the most inhuman decision of forming the Radcliff commission, which never visited the geographical area and simply drew a line on the map sitting in London, more cruelly Mountabten arbitrarily deciding the date of 14/15th August 1947 for the partition to take place, which was the cruelest month at the level of weather-monsoon rains and humidity. By not deferring the partition process to March 1948 as advised/suggested by the earlier Viceroy, and making no foolproof arrangments for possible riots and peaceful migration of minorities, if it was necessary to take place, Mountbatten committed the most heinous crime of human genocide in the world history, it was as serious a crime as of Hitler and Mussolini in the second world war, yet rather than putting him for trial in an international court for genocide, he was honored as being first Governor General of independent India!
Chaman Lal(Retd. Professor, JNU), New Delhi
Ex-Dean, Faculty of Languages, PU Chandigarh
British army could have prevented Partition riots
In 1946, Wavell suggested to the Whitehall to aim the transfer of power by March 1948. “Wavell’s own appreciation of any planned British withdrawal was that it must be treated largely as if it were a military plan made in time of war.” He wanted the British military to be gradually moved into the Muslim regions, the most restive parts in northern India, “and put down the worst of the communal violence.”
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No clarity: What was the need to speed up the Partition, which led to millions on both sides of border being killed or displaced? File photo
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Even 75 years after Independence, there is no clarity on why it was necessary to speed up the Partition by hurriedly announcing the Radcliffe Line, which resulted in the horrendous massacre on both sides of the India-Pakistan border.
In 2009, American Indologist-historian Stanley Wolpert blamed Lord Louis Mountbatten for this: “Britain’s shameful flight from its Indian Empire came only ten weeks after its last viceroy, Lord Louis (“Dickie”) Mountbatten, took it upon himself to cut ten months from the brief time allotted by the Labour government’s cabinet.” He charged him with “withdrawing its air and fleet cover, as well as the shield of British troops and arms, from South Asia’s 400 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.”
VP Menon, the then Constitutional Adviser to Lord Mountbatten, said in 1957 that the government had expected some amount of violence and had hoped that the ‘Boundary Force’ of the “carefully picked men of mixed composition” under Major General Rees would be able to cope with the problem. The British government had also believed that the state governments concerned would be able to tackle the problem by themselves. All these hopes were in vain. They did not prepare for the worst mass fury.
A research paper (Cambridge University Press) published by Robin Jeffrey on November 28, 2008, which was based on several Partition documents, including 1,200 pages held by Sussex University belonging to the late Major-General TW ‘Pete’ Rees, had within it a letter from Mountbatten to Congress leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad saying that he would provide foolproof security in the event of the partition.
On May 14, 1947, the Viceroy assured Abul Kalam Azad that he would “give complete assurance at least on this one question.” He would see to it that there was no bloodshed and riot. “I am a soldier, not a civilian. Once partition is accepted in principle, I shall issue orders to see that there are no communal disturbances anywhere in the country.” He added that he would adopt the sternest measures to nip the trouble in the bud. “I shall not use even the armed police. I will order the Army to act, and I will use tanks and aeroplanes to suppress anybody who wants to make trouble.”
However, no such thing happened. Millions died. The British troops did not intervene. Even now, a feeling of guilt persists among some British researchers. A book, Partition (2017), by Lt Gen Barney White Spunner said that this failure in 1947 “would dictate the history of South Asia for the next seventy years, leading to three wars, countless acts of terrorism, polarisation around the Cold War powers and to two nations with millions living in poverty spending disproportionate amounts on their military.”
Research since March 2020 by the “WW2” group in Britain on WWII and post-War history has revealed that as many as six British brigades were present in India at the time of the Partition. This strength was not deployed to prevent or quell violence. However, the group was not sure whether these British units were withheld due to opposition from Indian political leaders, which had first surfaced in 1942.
This doubt arose while reading a book by Daniel Marston, The Indian Army and the End of the Raj (2014), that the Congress leadership was wary of the role of British-led Indian military after the 1942 “Quit India” movement when 57 army battalions were used to assist the police for internal security duties. This combined force had opened fire on civilians 300 times, killing at least 1,000 protesters.
Another important research paper traced by “WW2” was a long 2017 University of Vermont dissertation quoting several Indian authors on the imperial influence on the post-colonial Indian army. Most interesting was the revelation that Viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell, a British military veteran, and his military chief Field Marshall Claude Auchinleck were on the same page in resisting repeated Whitehall interference, which they considered detrimental to the peaceful transition of power. For example, Auchinleck had opposed the INA trials as it would be harmful to the multi-religious Indian army, but he was overruled.
In 1946, Wavell suggested to the Whitehall to aim the transfer of power by March 1948. “Wavell’s own appreciation of any planned British withdrawal was that it must be treated largely as if it were a military plan made in time of war.” Among other things, he wanted the British military to be gradually moved into the Muslim regions, the most restive parts in northern India, “and put down the worst of the communal violence.”
However, the Attlee government chose to ignore his recommendation, which would have appeared as “a military retreat”. It chose to replace him with Mountbatten in February 1947 for a political solution.
Wavell’s “dismissal” and appointment of Lord Mountbatten was criticised by the House of Commons. However, Attlee argued that “the departure of Wavell emphasised that the responsibility for India, and its security, was now in Indian hands, even if it was still constitutionally bound to the United Kingdom.” The Vermont paper also said that the June 2, 1947, agreement by the Congress and the Muslim League was “followed on June 4th by the sudden announcement by Mountbatten of August 15th of that year as the date when power would formally transition from Britain to the Dominions.”
Auchinleck opposed the division of the Indian army on communal lines so soon. When he met Mountbatten, he told him that an orderly division would take at least 10 years, but he was given just 77 days.
However, by that time, Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, Auchinleck’s “subordinate” in North Africa in the Second World War, had taken over as the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London. Montgomery felt that Auchinleck was “wrapped up entirely in the Indian army” and that he paid little heed to the welfare of British soldiers in India. He recommended to Attlee and Mountbatten to dismiss him.
Was this the reason for the six British brigades not being deployed? Even if they had been deployed, would they have prevented the massacre?
Prof. Manager Pandey: Teacher, colleague, friend and scholar
https://www.newsclick.in/OBITUARY-manager-pandey-teacher-colleague-friend-scholar Chaman Lal*
On 6th November 2022 morning around 8.30 am, one of the legendary teacher and scholar of Jawaharlal Nehru University Prof. Manager passed away. He was 81 years old and author/editor of 30 plus books, all in Hindi, out of whichsome were translated in few other Indian languages .
Manager Pandey was born on 23rd September 1941 in village Lohti , now in Gopalganj and earlier in Sivan district of Bihar. His parents were keen on his studies and after early education in village and at Khurharia High school, which was about ten kilometres away from his village and Manager Pandey had to walk through a river to reach the school every day. He was sent to DAV College Banaras for graduation. He lost his mother in childhood and was taken care of by his widowed aunt (Bua); his farmer father continued to support his education. He was first in the family not only to receive education, but even received the highest academic degree of doctorate! Manager Pandey did his MA and PhD in Hindi from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1968 on the topic-Sur ka Kavya: Parampara aur Pratibha (Poetry of Sur(Das): Tradition and Talent). This thesis in book form was published as Krishana Katha ki Prampra aur Surdas ka Kavya(The tradition of Krishana narration and Surdas’s Poetry) from Macmillan publishers(Now defunct) in 1982, its new and revised edition came out as Bhakti Andolan aur Surdas ka Kavya(Bhakti tradition and Surdas’s Poetry) from Vaani Prakashan Delhi in 1993.
He started his career from Bareilly college Bareilly as lecturer in Hindi from 1969. He started writing scholarly articles in prestigious Hindi journals, that is how he was soon appointed lecturer in Hindi at Jodhpur University in 1970, from where he moved to JNU in March 1977. My interaction with him started from the very beginning. He was put up for sometime in H. No. 165 of Uttarakhand block, which was temporarily used as Guest House of JNU, and which was perhaps vacated by Prof. Satish Chandra, after he was appointed Chairman of UGC. Later he shifted to a flat in Ber Sarai, in front of Old Campus of JNU, where all the Schools/Centres of JNU were located prior to shifting to New Campus. As I was selected for admission to PhD course in Centre of Indian languages in 1976 during emergency, but my admission along with another student of CIL was withheld due to political reasons. We were offered admission in March 1976, after the emergency was withdrawn. I met Dr. Pandey and asked for his advice, as from 1977, CIL had planned to start M Phil admissions, prior to it, direct admission to PhD was done with a pre-PhD course. Dr. Pandey advised me to wait till 1977 session admissions, which were just months away and take admission to combined MPhil/PhD course. I accepted his advice and appeared for entrance test again in 1977, got selected and admitted and chose Dr. Pandey as my supervisor.
Centre of Indian languages as part of School of Languages in JNU, was set up in 1974 without any faculty with courses in Hindi and Urdu. Prof. Naamvar Singh joined as Professor and Chairperson in November 1974, around the time Dr. Savitri Chander Shobha and Dr. S P Sudhesh had also joined. Dr. Chintamani, Dr. Kedarnath Singh and Dr. Manager Pandey were brought by Prof. Naamvar Singh. Out of all six earlier faculty members of Hindi in CIL, Prof. Manager Pandey was the last to leave the world. Earlier in January 2022, Dr. S P Sudhesh had bidden goodbye at the age of 85+!
Manager Pandey’s talent of evaluation of literature and society flourished in JNU atmosphere of critical thinking. His first book Shabad Aur Karm(Word and Action) was published in 1981. This book created a breeze of freshness in a stereotype scene of Hindi literary criticism. Among students of Centre of Indian Languages, he had created a big impact by his teaching of Sociology of Literature and occasionally Historical Perspectives on Literature papers to MPhil students. Under the leadership of Prof. Naamvar Singh and Prof. Mohamad Hasan, the curricula of Hindi and Urdu was radicalised with inclusion of advanced courses, which could not be imagined in other Indian Universities. The critical thinking was the spirt of these core courses of literary studies, which were common for English or European languages literary studies, but entirely new for Indian languages. The two courses which attracted more attention and gave credibility to Hindi and Urdu literary studies were-Sociology of Literature and Historical perspective in Literature. (Sahitya ka Samajshashtar and Sahitya ki Itihas Drishti). Both these courses were taught in Hindi by Dr. Manager Pandey and Prof. Naamvar Singh. Naamvar Singh also taught Marxist Perspective of Literature to M A(Hindi) students, which was also taught by Manager Pandey during Namvar Singh’s sabbatical leave. In same year 1981, another book by Manager Pandey-Sahitya aur Itihas Drishti(Literature and Historical Perspective) came out from a newly set up progressive publisher People’s Literacy Delhi, which brought out many Marxist literary theory classical books in Hindi translation. This book established Manager Pandey as an important Hindi critic in academic world. Another book which brought laurels to Manager Pandey was Sahitya ke Samajshashtar ki Bhumika)An Introduction to Sociology of Literature) published in 1989 and since has run into many editions and has been translated into few other Indian languages, including Urdu. This book was and is still recommended in many other Indian languages MA and research degree courses.
Apart from these two important literary theory books, Manager Pandey published many books on modern and medieval literature based on these two theoretical academic perspectives. Though in general perception of Hindi writers/scholars/students and cultural activists, he was and is considered a Marxist literary critic. He remained President of a radical leftist cultural organisation Jan Sanskriti Manch for many years. Some of his later books are referred here briefly.
Manager Pandey’s next important publication was Anbhai Sancha. It was published in very tough and tragic circumstances. His young and only son Anand was murdered in his village in Bihar on 16th August 2000 by Bihar police in league with criminal gangs of the area, against whom Anand was fighting as a young and popular activist of the area. This book is dedicated to his son with an introduction describing the anguish of the author. This is collection of twenty articles on literature from his three decades innumerable writings on Hindi literature. This includes writings on medieval Bhakti literature to modern Dalit literature. A book-Mere Sakshatkar(My Interviews), based on his 16 interviews by different Hindi writers including many by his students and CIL faculty member Devender Chaubey are included in this collection published in 1998. Another book of interviews-Main bhi Munh mein Zuban Rakhta hoon(I too have a Voice) was published lately in 2005. Two more books based on his interviews were published-Batkahi and Samvad-Parisamvad. A collection of his 26 selected articles-Aalochna ki Samajikta(Social aspects of Criticism) was published in 2005, which is centred more on modern fiction and cultural issues. An issue of Samved edited by Kishan Kaljayee focussed on Manager Pandey and titled as Sankat ke Bavjud(Despite Crisis), was published in 2002, in which 26 known critics/writers of Hindi discussed Manager Pandey’s critical literary writings. A separate book Sankat ke Bavjud(Despite Crisis)-selections and translations of some world renowned authors was published later by Manager Pandey.
Few more books on the contribution of Manager Pandey were published during his life time, which included आलोचना का आत्मसंघर्ष-2011, सं०-रवि रंजन
दूसरी परम्परा का शुक्ल पक्ष- 2016, कमलेश वर्मा, सुचिता वर्मा
मैनेजर पाण्डेय: एक शिनाख्त- 2021, सम्पादक: डॉ० अर्चना त्रिपाठी और डॉ० मिथिलेश कुमार शुक्ल
One of his edited books is-Sivan ki Kavita (Poetry of Sivan). Despite lived in Delhi since 1977, Pandey ji was bound to his roots in Sivan in Bihar, the literary talent of that area he collected into this collection. He also edited selected writings of major Hindi writers-Surdas, Kumar Vikal, Nagarajun, Madhav Rao Sapre, Munshi Navjadik Lal Sreevastava and more.
Manager Pandey had brought many such books to public domain, which depicted freedom struggle of India, but were out of sight in present times. One such book was Desh Ki Baat, one was written in Marathi by Sakharam Vishnu Paradkar and another in Hindi by Dev Narayan Dwidey with the same title. Both books were important publications in socio-political history of India and Pandey ji edited and wrote meaningful introduction to these books. Another such book was Munshi Navjadik Lal Sreevastva’s Pradhinon ki Vijay Yatra(The Winning journey of Subjugates). Its copy was acquired from a German University with the help of his friends. The book was first published in 1934, its 1937 edition was banned by British colonial Govt. The book contains the description of freedom struggle of 36 countries including India. Same way Madhav Rao Sapre was an eminent journalist, also having the credit of first short story writer of Hindi-Eik Tokri bhar Muthi. His selected writings were edited by Pandey ji for NBT.
There are other books-Upnyas aur Loktantr(The Novel and Democracy), Sahitya aur Dalit Drishti(Literature and Dalit perspective), Hindi Kavita ka Atit aur Vartman(The Past and Present of Hindi Poetry), Aalochna mein Sahmati-Asahmati(The consent and dissent in Criticism), , Bhartiya Sahitya mein Pratirodh ki Parampra(The Legacy of Resistance in Indian Literature) , Mukti Ki Pukar(The Call of Liberation)-edited Poetry, Shabad aur Saadhna, Acharya Dwidey Abhinandan Granth (Edited), Lokgeeton mein 1857-edited with introduction(1857 in Folk Songs), Sanklit Nibandh(Collected essays of Manager Pandey) was published by NBT(National Book Trust of India).
One of his last and significant publication was Mughal Badshahon ki Hindi Kavita(Hindi poetry of Moghul Emperors) in 2016. In this collection of Hindi poetry penned by Mughal emperors, editor begins his introduction from Babar-the founder of Moghul regime in India, who wrote poetry in Persian. Babar’s daughter Gulbadan Begum also wrote poetry in Persian. Pandey ji found no evidence of Humayun writing poetry, but he appreciated and patronised poetry by having two Persian poets in his Durbar. From emperor Akbar begins the uninterrupted flow of poetry from the pen of Moghul emperors. Not only they wrote poetry, they patronised large number of poets in their durbars. Pandey ji found an old book Moghul Badshahon ki Hindi. The book was written by Pandit Chander Bali Pandey and was published by Nagri Pracharini Sabha Varanasi in 1940. This book contained Hindi poetry penned by Moghul emperors from Akbar to Bahadurshah Zafar. Manager Pandey also consulted Harbans Mukhia book Indian Moghuls, which further confirmed the poetry penned by emperor Shah Alam. This collection edited by Pandey ji includes maximum poems penned by Shah Alam, Akbar is second in the number or poems! Pandey ji notes that many people will be surprised to know that even Aurangzeb penned Hindi poems! With an elaborate introduction, Manager Pandey describes Moghul emperor’s Hindi as Braj Bhasha poetry. Surdas also wrote in Braj Bhasha, which was major poetic form of Hindi language before present Khari Boli replaced it! The collection includes Hindi poetry of Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb, Azam Shah, Mozam Shah Shah Alam Bahadur Shah, Jahandarshah Mauj, Mohammad Shah, Ahmad Shah, Aalamgir, Mohammad Shah Alam and lastly of last Mogul emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. Pandey ji had included the chronology of rule of Moghul emperors from 1526 to 1858 in his one-page appendix.
Since many years Manager Pandey was working on Dara Shikoh, who was killed by Aurangzeb in fratricidal war for power, but who was considered the most philosophical prince among all Moghul ruling families. That was Pandey ji’s most ambitious project, which remained unfulfilled due to his life being cut short.
Manager Pandey received many accolades in forms of awards and honours. Among other awards, he got the highest award-Shalaka Samman of Delhi Government, Dakshin Bharat Prachar Sabha’s Subramaniam Bharti award, was honoured by Bihar Government and few more.
Manager Pandey leaves behind his life partner Dr. Chandra Sadayat, who retired as Professor in Hindi from NCERT Delhi. His two daughters-Urmila and Dr. Rekha Pandey and deceased son Anand were born from his wife, who died in a Delhi hospital in year 2020. Dr. Rekha is working as Asst. Professor in Hindi at Sanskrit University Jaipur. Pandey ji had grandsons and granddaughters from his deceased son and elder daughter Urmila. He faced few tragedies in life. In 1984, when anti-Sikh riots took place in Delhi, his father expired in Bihar village, but he could not leave Delhi for two days due to curfew. His only son Anand was murdered by police in year 2000, which shook him, but he found solace in writing to absorb that tragic shock.
Manager Pandey kept a fine balance in relation with his family in Bihar and life partner in Jodhpur and Delhi. He remained true and honest with both and did not indulge in hypocrisy of keeping his relations with partner as secret, though an open one. However, he was not able to shed religious rites in his family life according to his Marxist convictions. He could not go as far as to pledge his body for research in medical field after donating the organs for many needy patients or make a will to ask for no religious rites to be performed after his death, which are being performed in Bihar home by his family members. Few times under the pressure of feudal culture prevalent in his Bihar home surroundings, he himself joined religious rites. Though it was not necessary to do so as even many left parties’ members or their families continue to perform religious rites, yet it sets an inspiring message for a public personality impacting people in large numbers if they do shed religious rites, as few left oriented individuals had been commiting the body donation after death for using organs to needy patients and leaving other parts for medical research!
Professor Manager Pandey enriched not only Hindi literature, but on the whole Indian literature by his writings and he also became a role model as a dedicated and disciplined scholar. He was known for scolding his students quite often, but remained equally concerned teacher for his students interests and always protected them! Manager Pandey never became used to new social media forms. He had his email id and whatsapp too, but he never used these, no question of being on facebook, twitter or Instagram, not even on professional academic sites like academia.edu, Research Gate or linked.in. His pre mobile era communication was through letters or landline calls. In mobile era, he used to have long conversations with his students, ex-students, colleagues/ex colleagues, friends and fellow writers on mobile.
His death was mourned not only in condolence/memorial meetings including one in CIL and another by JNUTA in JNU campus, many by his publishers and writers’ organisations in Delhi; in Bihar especially in Sivan area many meetings were held. Obituaries were written by many writers in Hindi, English, Punjabi in many parts of the country. He enjoyed respect across political parties and Shivanand Tewari, ex Bihar Minister and a senior RJD leader wrote on his passing away in a daily paper, eulogising him.
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*Chaman Lal was first PhD student of Prof. Manager Pandey during 1977-82 and remained a colleague in Centre of Indian Languages faculty during year 2005-06.
स्मृति शेष: मैनेजर पांडेय– शिक्षक, सहकर्मी, मित्र और विद्वान
मैनेजर पांडेय ने अपनी रचनाओं से न सिर्फ़ हिंदी साहित्य, बल्कि संपूर्ण भारतीय साहित्य जगत को समृद्ध किया। वह एक अत्यंत प्रतिबद्ध शिक्षक थे।
15 Nov 2022https://hindi.newsclick.in/Memory-Balance-Manager-Pandey-Teacher-Colleague-Friend-and-Scholar
Image courtesy : NBT
6 नवंबर, 2022 को तक़रीबन 8.30 बजे जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय (JNU) के प्रख्यात शिक्षकों और विद्वानों में से एक प्रोफ़ेसर मैनेजर पांडेय का निधन हो गया। वह 81 वर्ष के थे। उन्होंने 30 से ज़्यादा किताबें लिखी/संपादित की थी। ये सभी किताबें हिंदी में थीं, जिनमें से कुछ किताबों का दूसरी भारतीय भाषाओं में अनुवाद भी किया गया था।
मैनेजर पांडेय का जन्म 23 सितंबर,1941 को बिहार के इस समय गोपालगंज और पहले सिवान ज़िले के लोहटी गांव में हुआ था। गांव में प्रारंभिक शिक्षा हासिल करने के बाद उन्होंने खुरारिया हाई स्कूल से पढ़ाई की, जिसकी दूरी उनके गांव से लगभग 10 किलोमीटर थी और जहां जाने के लिए उन्हें हर दिन एक नदी पार करना होता था। उनके माता -पिता ने स्नातक की पढ़ाई के लिए उन्हें बनारस (उत्तर प्रदेश) के डीएवी कॉलेज भेज दिया।
पांडेय ने बचपन में बहुत पहले ही अपनी मां को खो दिया था और उनका ख़्याल उनकी विधवा बुआ ने रखा था। उनके पिता किसान थे और पिता उनकी शिक्षा को आगे जारी रखने में मददगार रहे। यही वजह है कि अपने परिवार से शिक्षा हासिल करने वाले पहले व्यक्ति थे, बल्कि उच्चतम शैक्षणिक डिग्री,यानी कि डॉक्टरेट हासिल करने वाले भी पहले व्यक्ति थे।
मैनेजर पांडेय ने 1968 में हिंदी में मास्टर ऑफ आर्ट्स (एमए) और ‘सूर का काव्य: परम्परा और प्रतिभा’ विषय पर बनारस हिंदू विश्वविद्यालय (BHU) से डॉक्टर ऑफ़ फ़िलॉसफ़ी (पीएचडी) की उपाधि पायी थी। इस थीसिस को किताब की शक्ल में मैकमिलन (अब डिफंक्ट) प्रकाशन ने 1982 में ‘कृष्ण कथा की परम्परा और सूरदास का काव्य’ के रूप में प्रकाशित किया गया था। इसका नया और संशोधित संस्करण 1993 में वाणी प्रकाशन, दिल्ली से ‘भक्ति आंदोलन और सुरदास का काव्य’ के रूप में सामने आया।
पांडेय ने 1969 में बरेली कॉलेज में बतौर हिंदी व्याख्याता अपना करियर शुरू किया। उन्होंने प्रतिष्ठित हिंदी पत्रिकाओं में विद्वतापूर्ण लेख लिखने शुरू कर दिए, और जल्द ही 1970 में जोधपुर विश्वविद्यालय में व्याख्याता के रूप में नियुक्त कर दिए गए, जहां से वह मार्च,1977 में दिल्ली स्थित जेएनयू चले आये।
उनके साथ मेरा मिलना-जुलना शुरू से ही रहा। उन्हें कुछ समय के लिए उत्तराखंड ब्लॉक के उस एच.नंबर 165 में ठहराया गया था, जिसे कि अस्थायी रूप से एक जेएनयू गेस्ट हाउस के रूप में इस्तेमाल किया जाता था, और जिसे संभवतः प्रोफ़ेसर सतीश चंद्र ने तब खाली कर दिया था, जब उन्हें यूनिवर्सिटी ग्रांट्स कमीशन का अध्यक्ष नियुक्त किया किया था। बाद में वह उस पुराने कैंपस के सामने बेर सराय के एक फ्लैट में शिफ़्ट हो गये थे, जहां उस समय जेएनयू के सभी स्कूल/सेंटर स्थित थे।
आपातकाल के दौरान मुझे 1976 में भारतीय भाषा केंद्र में पीएचडी पाठ्यक्रम में दाखिला के लिए चुन लिया गया था, लेकिन राजनीतिक कारणों से एक अन्य छात्र के साथ मेरा दाखिला रोक दिया गया। आपातकाल वापस ले लेने के बाद हमें मार्च, 1977 में दाखिले की अनुमति दे दी गयी। मैं पांडेय से मिला और इस सिलसिले में उनसे सलाह मांगी, जैसा कि विदित हो कि 1977 से सेंटर फ़ॉर इंडियन लैंग्वेज़,यानी CIL ने एमफ़िल में दाखिला शुरू करने की योजना बना ली गयी थी। इससे पहले पीएचडी में सीधे-सीधे दाखिला प्री पीएचडी पाठ्यक्रम के साथ होता था। उन्होंने मुझे 1977 के सत्र के दाखिले तक इंतज़ार करने की सलाह दी, जो महज़ चंद महीनों की बात थी और एक संयुक्त एमफ़िल/पीएचडी कोर्स में दाखिला लेना था। मैंने उनकी सलाह पर ग़ौर किया और 1977 में फिर से दाखिले की परीक्षा में भागीदारी की, सेलेक्ट हो गया और मैंने उन्हें अपने सुपरवाइज़र के रूप में चुन लिया।
1974 में जेएनयू में स्कूल ऑफ़ लैंग्वेज़ेज के हिस्से के रूप में सीआईएल बिना किसी फ़ैकल्टी के स्थापित किया गया था, जिसमें हिंदी और उर्दू में पाठ्यक्रम थे। नामवर सिंह नवंबर 1974 में प्रोफ़ेसर और चेयरपर्सन के रूप में शामिल हुए थे।यह तक़रीबन वही समय था,जब सावित्री चंदर शोबा और एस पी सुधेश भी शामिल हुए थे। चिंतमणि, केदारनाथ सिंह और मैनेजर पांडेय को नामवार सिंह ही यहां लाये थे। सीआईएल में हिंदी के शुरुआती सभी छह फ़ैकल्टी सदस्यों में से पांडे इस दुनिया को अलविदा कहने वाले आखिरी व्यक्ति थे। जनवरी, 2022 में एसपी सुधेश ने 85 से ज़्यादा साल की उम्र में इस दुनिया को अलविदा कह दिया था।
साहित्य और समाज के मूल्यांकन को लेकर पांडेय की प्रतिभा जेएनयू के आलोचनात्मक सोच वाले माहौल में विकसित हुई थी। उनकी पहली किताब, ‘शब्द और कर्म’ 1981 में प्रकाशित हुई थी। इसने हिंदी साहित्यिक आलोचना के घिसे-पिटे मंज़र में ताज़े हवा का झोंका ले आयी। सीआईएल के छात्रों के बीच उन्होंने एमफ़िल के छात्रों को साहित्य के समाजशास्त्र और कभी-कभी साहित्यिक पेपर पर ऐतिहासिक परिप्रेक्ष्य के अपने शिक्षण से बड़ा असर डाला।
प्रोफ़ेसर नामवर सिंह और मोहम्मद हसन की अगुवाई में उन्नत पाठ्यक्रमों को शामिल करते हुए हिंदी और उर्दू के पाठ्यक्रमों में ऐसे ज़बरदस्त सुधार लाये, जिनकी कल्पना दूसरे भारतीय विश्वविद्यालयों में नहीं की जा सकती थी। इन मुख्य पाठ्यक्रमों की मूल प्रकृति आलोचनात्मक सोच वाली थी, जो कि अंग्रेज़ी या यूरोपीय भाषाओं के साहित्यिक अध्ययन के लिहाज़ से तो आम थी, लेकिन भारतीय भाषाओं के लिए बिल्कुल नयी थी।
जिन दो पाठ्यक्रमों ने सबसे ज़्यादा ध्यान आकर्षित किया और हिंदी और उर्दू साहित्यिक अध्ययनों को विश्वसनीयता दी थी, वे थे- ‘साहित्य का समाजशास्त्र और साहित्य की इतिहास दृष्टि’। इन दोनों पाठ्यक्रमों को मैनेजर पांडेय और नामवर सिंह हिंदी में पढ़ाते थे। नामवर सिंह ने एमए (हिंदी) के छात्रों को साहित्य का मार्क्सवादी परिप्रेक्ष्य पढ़ाया था, जिसे पांडे ने भी सिंह के अध्ययन प्रोत्साहन अवकाश के दौरान पढ़ाया था।
1981 में नव स्थापित प्रगतिशील प्रकाशक, पीपुल्स लिटरेसी दिल्ली से पाण्डेय की एक और किताब, ‘साहित्य और इतिहास दृष्टि’ निकली, जिसने हिंदी अनुवाद में कई मार्क्सवादी साहित्यिक सिद्धांत शास्त्रीय पुस्तकें निकालीं। इस किताब ने पांडेय को अकादमिक जगत में एक महत्वपूर्ण हिंदी आलोचक के रूप में स्थापित कर दिया। एक दूसरी किताब, जिसने उन्हें ख्याति दिलाई थी, वह थी- ‘साहित्य के समाजशास्त्र की भूमिका’, जो 1989 में प्रकाशित हुई थी, और तब से इसके कई संस्करणों निकले हैं और उर्दू सहित कुछ अन्य भारतीय भाषाओं में इसका अनुवाद भी किया गया है। यह किताब कई अन्य भारतीय भाषाओं में एम.ए. और रिसर्च डिग्री कोर्सों के लिए अनुशंसित थी और इस समय भी है।
इसे भी पढ़ें :विडंबना: मार्क्सवादी मैनेजर पांडेय को राम नाम सत्य!
इन दो महत्वपूर्ण साहित्यिक सिद्धांत वाली किताबों के अलावे पांडेय ने आधुनिक और मध्यकालीन साहित्य पर भी कई पुस्तकें प्रकाशित करवायीं। हिंदी लेखकों/विद्वानों/छात्रों और सांस्कृतिक कार्यकर्ताओं की आम धारणा में वह एक मार्क्सवादी साहित्यिक आलोचक थे और माने जाते हैं। वह कई सालों तक एक आमूल-चूल परिवर्तनवादी वामपंथी सांस्कृतिक संगठन जन संस्कृति मंच के अध्यक्ष रहे। उनकी बाद की कुछ पुस्तकों का संक्षेप में यहाँ उल्लेख किया गया है।
पांडेय का अगला महत्वपूर्ण प्रकाशित किताब अंभाई सांचा थी। यह बहुत ही मुश्किल और दुखद परिस्थितियों में प्रकाशित हुई थी। कथित तौर पर बिहार पुलिस ने इलाक़े के उस आपराधिक गिरोहों के साथ मिलकर उनके युवा और इकलौते बेटे आनंद की बिहार स्थित उनके गांव में 16 अगस्त, 2000 को हत्या कर दी थी, जिसके ख़िलाफ़ आनंद बौतर एक नौजवान और लोकप्रिय कार्यकर्ता लड़ रहे थे। यह किताब लेखक की पीड़ा का वर्णन करते हुए एक प्रस्तावना के साथ अपने बेटे को समर्पित है। यह हिंदी साहित्य पर उनके तीन दशकों के असंख्य लेखन से साहित्य पर लिखे गये 20 लेखों का संग्रह है। इसमें मध्यकालीन भक्ति साहित्य से लेकर आधुनिक दलित साहित्य तक के लेखन शामिल हैं। 1998 में प्रकाशित ‘मेरे साक्षात्कर’ नामक पुस्तक विभिन्न हिंदी लेखकों के साथ उनके 16 साक्षात्कारों पर आधारित है, जिसमें उनके कई छात्र और सीआईएल फ़ैकल्टी सदस्य देवेंद्र चौबे भी शामिल हैं।
साक्षात्कारों की एक और किताब, ‘मैं भी मुंह में ज़ुबान रखता हूं’ 2005 में प्रकाशित हुई थी। उनके साक्षात्कारों पर आधारित दो और किताबें,’बतकही’ और ‘संवाद-परिसंवाद’ प्रकाशित हुईं थीं। 2005 में उनके चुने हुए 26 लेखों का संग्रह, ‘आलोचना की सामाजिकता’ प्रकाशित हुआ था, जो आधुनिक कथा और सांस्कृतिक मुद्दों पर अधिक केंद्रित था।
किशन कालजयी की सम्पादित सामवेद का एक अंक मैनेजर पाण्डेय पर केन्द्रित था और ‘संकट के बावजूद’ शीर्षक से यह किताब 2002 में प्रकाशित हुई थी, जिसमें हिन्दी के 26 जाने-माने आलोचकों/लेखकों ने उनकी आलोचनात्मक साहित्यिक रचनाओं पर चर्चा की थी। पांडे ने एक अलग किताब, ‘संकट के बावजूद’ कुछ विश्व प्रसिद्ध लेखकों के चुने हुए लेख और अनुवाद बाद में प्रकाशित करायी थी।
मैनेजर पाण्डेय के योगदान पर कुछ और किताबें उनके जीवन काल में ही प्रकाशित हो गयी थीं।
उनकी संपादित पुस्तकों में से एक सिवान की कविता है। 1977 से दिल्ली में रहने के बावजूद मैनेजर पांडेय बिहार के सिवान में अपनी जड़ों से बंधे हुए थे और उन्होंने उस इलाक़े की साहित्यिक प्रतिभा को इस संग्रह में एकत्र किया था। उन्होंने प्रमुख हिंदी लेखकों – सूरदास, कुमार विकल, नागार्जुन, माधव राव सप्रे, मुंशी नवज़ादिक, लाल श्रीवास्तव और अन्य लेखकों के चुनिंदा लेखों का संपादन भी किया था।
मैनेजर पाण्डेय ने भारत के स्वतंत्रता संग्राम को चित्रित करने वाली ऐसी अनेक किताबों को सामने लाया था, जो मौजूदा वक़्त में दृष्टि से ओझल हो गयी हैं। ऐसी ही एक किताब थी, ‘देश की बात’, मराठी में एक किताब सखाराम विष्णु पराडकर और दूसरी हिंदी में देव नारायण द्विवेदी द्वारा इसी शीर्षक वाली थीं। दोनों किताबें भारत के सामाजिक-राजनीतिक इतिहास की महत्वपूर्ण किताबें थीं।
ऐसी ही एक और किताब मुंशी नवजादिक लाल श्रीवास्तव की ‘पराधीनों की विजय यात्रा’ थी। उन्होंने अपने मित्रों की सहायता से एक जर्मन विश्वविद्यालय से इसकी प्रति हासिल की थी। यह किताब पहली बार 1934 में प्रकाशित हुई थी, इसके 1937 संस्करण को ब्रिटिश औपनिवेशिक शासकों ने प्रतिबंधित कर दिया था। इस किताब में भारत सहित 36 देशों के स्वतंत्रता संग्राम का वर्णन है। इसी तरह, माधव राव सप्रे एक जाने-माने पत्रकार थे, जिन्हें हिंदी के पहले लघु कथाकार होने का श्रेय भी प्राप्त है,उन्होंने ‘एक टोकरी भर मुठी’ लिखी थी। मैनेजर पांडेय ने उनकी चुनी हुई रचनाओं का संपादन किया था।
उनकी अन्य किताबें है- उपन्यास और लोकतंत्र, साहित्य और दलित दृष्टि, हिंदी कविता का अतीत और वर्तमान, आलोचना में सहमति-असहमति, भारतीय साहित्य में प्रतिरोध की परंपरा, मुक्ति की पुकार- संपादित कविता, शब्द और साधना, आचार्य द्विवेदी अभिनंदन ग्रंथ (संपादित), लोकगीतों में 1857- प्रस्तावना के साथ संपादित, एनबीटी (नेशनल बुक ट्रस्ट ऑफ़ इंडिया) द्वारा प्रकाशित संकलित निबन्ध (मैनेजर पांडे के संग्रहित निबंध)।
उनके अंतिम और महत्वपूर्ण किताबों में से एक किताब 2016 में प्रकाशित ‘मुग़ल बादशाहों की हिंदी कविता’ थी। इस संग्रह में संपादक ने अपनी प्रस्तावना भारत में मुग़ल शासन के संस्थापक बाबर से शुरू की थी, जिन्होंने फ़ारसी में कविता लिखी थी। बाबर की बेटी गुलबदन बेगम ने भी फ़ारसी में कविता लिखी थी। मैनेजर पांडेय को हुमायूं के कविता लिखने का तो कोई प्रमाण नहीं मिल पाया, लेकिन उन्होंने हुमायूं के ख़ुद के दरबार में रहने वाले दो फ़ारसी कवियों की सराहना और उन्हें संरक्षण देते हुए पाया। बादशाह अकबर से मुग़ल बादशाहों की कलम से काव्य का अविरल प्रवाह शुरू होता है। बादशाहों ने न सिर्फ़ कविता लिखीं, बल्कि बड़ी संख्या में कवियों को संरक्षण भी दिया।
पांडेय ने एक पुरानी किताब, ‘मुग़ल बादशाहों की हिंदी’ खोज निकाली थी। यह किताब पंडित चंदर बलि पांडे ने लिखी थी और 1940 में नागरी प्रचारिणी सभा, वाराणसी से प्रकाशित हुई थी। इस किताब में अकबर से लेकर बहादुरशाह ज़फ़र तक के मुग़ल बादशाहों की लिखी गयी हिंदी कवितायें थीं। उन्होंने हरबंस मुखिया की किताब ‘इंडियन मुग़ल’ भी पढ़ी, जिससे कि बादशाह शाह आलम की लिखी कविता की और भी पुष्टि हुई। पाण्डेय के सम्पादित इस संग्रह में शाह आलम की लिखी कविताओं की संख्या सबसे ज़्यादा है, कविताओं की संख्या के लिहाज़ से अकबर दूसरे स्थान पर है। मैनेजर पाण्डेय कहते हैं कि कई लोगों को यह जानकर आश्चर्य होगा कि औरंगज़ेब ने भी हिंदी कवितायें लिखी थीं। एक विस्तृत भूमिका के साथ वह इस मुग़ल बादशाह की हिंदी को ब्रजभाषा की कविता के रूप में वर्णित करते हैं।
सूरदास ने भी उस ब्रजभाषा में लिखा था, जो कि वर्तमान खड़ी बोली की जगह लेने से पहले हिंदी भाषा का एक प्रमुख काव्य रूप थी। इस संग्रह में अकबर, जहांगीर, शाहजहां, औरंगज़ेब, आजम शाह, मोअज़्ज़म शाह शाह आलम बहादुर शाह, जहांदारशाह मौज, मोहम्मद शाह, अहमद शाह, आलमगीर, मोहम्मद शाह आलम और आख़िरी मुग़ल बादशाह बहादुर शाह ज़फ़र की हिंदी कवितायें शामिल हैं।
मैनेजर पांडेय सालों तक दारा शिकोह पर काम करते रहे थे, जिसे औरंगज़ेब ने सत्ता के लिए भाइयों के बीच होने वाले युद्ध में मार दिया था, लेकिन दारा को सभी मुग़ल शासक परिवारों में सबसे बड़ा दार्शनिक शहज़ादा माना जाता था। वह उनकी सबसे महत्वाकांक्षी परियोजना थी, जो कि उनकी ज़िंदगी को और ज़्यादा मोहलत नहीं मिल पाने के चलते अधूरी रह गयी।
मैनेजर पाण्डेय को बतौर पुरस्कार और सम्मान अनेक सम्मान प्राप्त हुए, जैसे; दिल्ली सरकार का शलाका सम्मान, दक्षिण भारत प्रचार सभा का सुब्रमण्यम भारती पुरस्कार, उन्हें बिहार सरकार के अलावे और कई पुरस्कारों से नवाज़ा गया था।
मैनेजर पाण्डेय ने अपने लेखन से न सिर्फ़ हिन्दी साहित्य,बल्कि भारतीय साहित्य जगत को भी समृद्ध किया और वह एक प्रतिबद्ध और अनुशासित विद्वान के रूप में छात्रों के आदर्श भी बने। वह अपने छात्रों को अक्सर डांटने के लिए जाने जाते थे, लेकिन उसी तरह उन छात्रों को लेकर चिंतित होने वाले शिक्षक भी रहे और हमेशा उनके बचाव में खड़े रहे।
उनके निधन पर शोक/स्मृति सभाओं में शोक व्यक्त करने वालों में न सिर्फ सीआईएल और जेएनयूटीए जैसे संगठन शामिल थे, बल्कि इनमें दिल्ली के उनके कई प्रकाशक और लेखकों के संगठन भी शामिल थे। बिहार और विशेषकर सिवान इल़ाके में ऐसी कई सभायें हुईं। देश के कई हिस्सों में हिंदी, अंग्रेज़ी और पंजाबी में कई लेखकों ने उन्हें याद करते हुए कई श्रद्धांजलि लेख लिखे।
लेखक दिल्ली स्थित जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय के भारतीय भाषा केंद्र (Centre of Indian Languages) में सेवानिवृत्त प्रोफ़ेसर और पूर्व चेयरपर्सन हैं। इस समय वह भगत सिंह अभिलेखागार और संसाधन केंद्र नई दिल्ली के मानद सलाहकार हैं।
अंग्रेज़ी में प्रकाशित मूल आलेख को पढ़ने के लिए नीचे दिये गये लिंक पर क्लिक करें
OBITUARY: Manager Pandey — Teacher, Colleague, Friend and Scholar
Colonialism and sufferings of Indian indentured Labour in Africa and The Caribbean
Sunak’s ‘Arrival’ Revives Memories of Indentured Indian Labour During 19th Century
Chaman Lal | 28 Oct 2022https://www.newsclick.in/Sunak-Arrival-Revives-Memories-Indentured-Indian-Labour-During-19th-Century
Continue reading “Colonialism and sufferings of Indian indentured Labour in Africa and The Caribbean”Human life longevity: Utopia or Reality?
https://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-55/55-14-17/55-14-17-How%20Much%20Average%20Healthy%20Human%20Life%20is%20Possible.html?s=08&fbclid=IwAR16BXyxj6GwBOdxxEIDQ6fE3kFI6ShFnESGJroL7HjLhnHXGresfVIOvXgHow Much Average Healthy Human Life is Possible?
Chaman Lal*
Starting on a personal note, recently at around the age of 75 years, I have got advanced Hearing aids with many features, which makes hearing a bit more comfortable than the earlier aids, which were digital, but not with advanced features as the new technological advances have made possible. These aids are expensive, starting from nearly one lakh rupees and going upwards with more sophisticated features. Ironically Govt. of India through CGHS (Central Govt. Health Services) rather than compensating a bit more to its employees or retirees, has decreased the reimbursement to merely 16 thousand rupees for both sides’ aids, earlier it was reimbursed up to 50 thousand rupees, when the device was not so expensive and employee could almost recover the full amount in reimbursement. Now CGHS does not reimburse even 20% of such advanced device price. The technological advancement in health care sector is meant to help ordinary human beings and not make these just a privilege for few rich people, who can spend huge amounts on Medicare. This also brought to my mind the other physical impairments which develop with age like arthurites, diabetes, vision loss, prostate gland enlargement, cardiological problems etc. It is true that average human life has risen to around seventy years, despite limited health care facilities available to common people at large.
Here the question arises, was it or is it possible to have a rise in average healthy human life? My gut reply is yes; it was possible by this time itself that average healthy human life could have easily been raised to a hundred years, had the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia had spread all over the world, at least imperialist form to which Lenin described as the highest stage of capitalism or now a days called crony form of capitalism had been kept under some form of social control. If there has been no division of one percent have-alls and 99% have-nots in recent terminology developed in many countries of the world. If the world had not passed through second world war and various international wars for capitalists’ interests, the interests of weapon producing industry, whose basic aim is to have wars, if not happening, then create massive lies like WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) to attack Iraq by Bush and Blair duo of imperialists, which got exposed only after destroying Iraq and later Libya. Had the Soviet Union despite all its ills of growing capitalism, which China in its height of revolutionary arrogance used to describe as ‘social imperialism’, which is one of the factors behind Russian-Ukrainian war, has not broken up into fifteen countries, it was possible to have an average healthy life of human beings raised to a hundred years even at this point of time! Rahul Sankartyayan a Hindi Marxist writer in one of his highly scientifically imaginative prose-Baisivin Sadi(Twenty second Century) has created such a utopia of human life, which could have proved true and actual, if in twentieth century and continuing twenty first century all these wars fought due to neo colonial and neo imperial crony capitalist interests had not disturbed the flow of history towards the humanist dream of Marx or even earlier idealist philosophers. In Rahul’s imagination the working hours and days of human societies would have been radically decreased, very harsh working conditions changed through scientific mechanical innovations, (as the robots have already come up) and the multiple and wholesome hours of entertainment, highest level of cultural development, with no crime in society and the level of happiness among human beings would have increased immensely.
If all these trillions or more of money which had been spent on nuclear bombs, weapons and other forms of capitalist profits world over, had been invested into health and education. The newly liberated or freed countries of Asia and Africa had not indulged in fratricidal killings like India and Pakistan or some other countries had, and the focus had more been on human development in totality, I could very well foresee the dream creation of Rahul’s Baisivin Sadi , based on Marx concept of socialism or even beyond that of communism, coming closer. It was and is possible even without full-fledged socialism coming into practice, as Thomas Piketty like writers etc had shown in their recent books.
It was possible to achieve hundred percent literacy by now in all countries, even in so called most backward much exploited ex colonised countries of Africa, without socialist revolution. And it was possible to find treatment to most common old age or even earlier age diseases relating to cardiology, ortho or prostate or sugar related diseases etc. Even during the worst attack of present pandemic Covid-19, the multiple countries have been able to develop vaccination for the deadly killer disease, which still continues. The issue of environment pollution, rising of temperatures in climate world over, even so-called cold countries of Europe and Americans being burnt by same profit motivated industries which are using human damaging gases and other products, could not have reached at this stage, if some kind of social control had been kept on profits at the cost of human life.
How the social system affects human life can be seen from continuing Covid-19 pandemic throughout the world. There is a qualitative difference between the countries with different socio-political system to handle the pandemic. On one side there are few countries like Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea, where the human life loss is minimum, less than thousands in number. On the other side there are countries like USA, Brazil, India, UK and many more, where loss of human life is in millions. While USA and European countries have provided food and shelter to unemployed and poor people in some dignified manner, India like countries have treated poor and people, who lost employment due to covid in a most ruthless and pitiless manner and reduced them to the status of beggars, who got minimal level of raw food from state funds, but shown as personal gift of rulers with photographs and votes sought for this ‘pity’ shown to them!. The way lakhs of Indian working people returning to their villages by walk, cycling, buses and trains due to getting no work and wages with no support from state, and got crushed under trains, road vehicles, died by hunger and exhaustion. People have been left to die like insects and their dead bodies got most horrible treatment, seen by the whole world on electronic media. The second round of Covid during April-May 2021,was the most horrible even for much influential middle classes, when in Delhi like capital city of second largest populated country of the world saw the naked death dance due to lack of gas supply to hospitals and even richer patients dyeing in front of cameras, was such a horrifying spectacle, which would have made the rulers of any country hung their head in shame and would have required resignation and apology as are demanded from ex colonial countries like England and US for their crimes and rightly so. Yet rather than any sense of guilt, the rulers of country shamelessly speak of dealing with pandemic as ‘best’ in the world and claim to be ‘Vishavguru’! Those few in media showed the reality on ground have been targeted or under the close watch of ‘big brother’, who have claims to be the ‘largest democracy’ in the world!
Socialist or ex socialist countries like Cuba, Vietnam or China have preferred to save human lives, even with certain strict and harsh measures than keep on earning profits for the business and capitalists. It was economic and financial crisis with the complete closure of economic activities and the workers of those places had lost jobs and wages, but the state had ensured their lives to be saved with restrictions but helping them with food and other needs. China is blamed by western world for causing Covid from its laboratories, but same China did not allow its largest population among the whole world, to die like American people, who accuse China for spreading covid. Why America or Brazil or India did not try to save their population from dyeing in millions? And why China and North Korea termed as authoritarian and dictatorial countries saved its citizens by taking harsh measures like shutting people in their homes, stopping all economic activities?
Cuba and Vietnam did not take much harsh measures, yet their health system has been so advanced and pro people that the human lives were not lost in such massive manners as in other countries, whose economic system is pro corporates. Is it not an irony of the situation that as more people died in pandemic, the profits and coffers of biggest billionaires of the world increased manyfold, including those of Adanis and Ambanies in India which joined the club of ten richest people in the world! Death and destruction of human life and increase in corporates coffers seems to be inter related, that is what pandemic in 2019-22 has proved and showed to the world people like a mirror! But the mirror does not make them rise in anger and throw away such system as Bhagat Singh had asked people to do long back.
As about average longevity of human life, Covid 19 has definitely negatively impacted, but if we take examples not from much older past-Nirad C Chaudhary the renowned author of ‘The Autobiography of an unknown Indian’, lived up to 102 years, while his last novel-Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse published at the age of 100 years! He was fit and active till hundred years of his life. Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, the renowned Ghadarite revolutionary, to whom I had the chance to meet many times, lived up to same age 102 years and at the age of hundred years, his standing straight speech was so loud and stirring that even young people could not make such stirring speech. English authors Mulk Raj Anand and Khushwant Singh both lived up to 99 years of life and remained actively writing till last! Two athletes from Punjab Fauja Singh and Mrs. Maan Kaur had participated in running competition at the age of hundred years, just recently 94 years old woman from Haryana won some medal in running.
Most of the persons mentioned above lived in relatively comfortable conditions which provided them with social and financial security and they could avail Medicare with ease. If the same conditions could be provided to society at large, the longevity of average human being could definitely reach 90 years plus active life.
The more important factor is sense of financial and social security of the citizens in society. With these securities, a large number of populations would otherwise be saved from diseases, which are caused by tensions and stress and environmental pollution. There is a term lumpen proletariat, which is a negative term and used for those criminals, who come from poor and working-class background population. Why they turn lumpen? Because of lack of jobs and positive absorption in society. When we say and see with our own eyes that capitalist system produces an army of unemployed people to keep working class in control with limited wage structure, as whenever working-class fights for wage rise, they are threatened with dismissals and replaced with even lesser waged people engaged from unemployed population, who are ready to work at much less wage. Some part of these lumpens turn into hardened criminals-gangsters, rapists and murderers!
What is happening in India today? Qualified teachers and other professionals are ready to work and do work at pitiable wages. Why India and more countries are facing increased serious crimes of murder and rapes with much brutality, because it is crony capitalist system which gives birth to most heinous crimes. Those countries have lesser crime rate, which have more social securities, more equality in gender matters, apart from socialist countries, which theoretically if not practically follow these principles. Some European or Nordic and some of Latin American countries have lesser crime of rape, than other countries, because in their systems women participate in socio-cultural set up of those countries at equal level and sex among men and women is neither taboo nor suppressed, so the mutual consent becomes a major factor among men-women relations. Norway like country does not execute or lynch barbaric murderer of seventy plus kids as the country like hundred plus more countries have abolished death sentence or capital punishment, but in countries like India which have deadly combination of feudal religious fundamentalism with crony capitalism, not criminals, but innocent people are lynched on the base of their particular religious faith or eating habits and the those lynching murderers are honoured by leaders of majoritarian religious fundamentalist ruling parties.
Only if people in the world could realise that social control over money production is in their own interests. Creating a wedge between and one and Ninety nine percent is the root cause of all crimes, all health-related problems. Had the Socialist revolution in Russia kept advancing as it was till Vietnam liberation in 1975, the world human society would have been much more kind, humane and full of empathy. Advancement of socialism, even some social control over capitalism would have brought much cheer to society. In a fuller socialist transformation of the world, which is at present is not even a dream, average human life could have increased to 150 years and all other things imagined by Rahul Sankartyayan in his book-Baisivin Sadi (twenty second century)!
But the present situation is such, especially after pandemic and wars, that the world is moving towards the dangerous path of fascism and could end up in even more destruction, along with the warming up of climate. Rosa Luxemburg had rightly warned before her brutal assassination, that world has to choose-Socialism or Barbarism. There are little signs of world moving towards Socialism and dangerously sliding downwards to barbarism. Would there be a stop or break to this slide, it will not be less than a miracle, if it happens. But this miracle would not happen at supernatural level, only exploited, oppressed and suffering humanity can bring about this stop, through their sustained struggles, as Indian farmers struggled during 2020-21 facing all kinds of oppressive state machinery tactics, sacrificing more than seven hundred farmers lives in the process, had for a while stopped it or Sri Lankan people are trying to stop, some countries in Latin America are also proving a bulwark against barbarism. The hope lies in such people and their mass struggles!
*The writer is ex Dean, faculty of Languages at Panjab University Chandigarh.
Walking with BhagatSingh….
Book Review: Bhagat Singh – The ‘Lamp of Reason’ That ‘Ceased to Burn’
Chaman Lal | 28 Sep 2022
On the revolutionary’ s birthday on Sept 28, Amar Kany Jttu’s book ‘Walking With Bhagat Singh’ focuses on his ideas and role in the Indian freedom struggle and interprets his thoughts in Marxist tradition.
There has hardly been a time when books or other publications on Bhagat Singh were not being written. This began in 1929 when publications on Bhagat Singh became the target of British colonial proscriptions. By now more than 600 books have appeared on Bhagat Singh in nearly 20 Indian and foreign languages. While many books are based on romantic tales of his life, few books focus on his ideas and role in the Indian freedom struggle. Amar Kant Jttu’s book, Walking With Bhagat Singh Soon After Independence, is one such book that focuses on his revolutionary ideas and interprets his thoughts in the Marxist tradition.
The book was published just before the onset of COVID in 2019. The cover has a handsome hat-wearing photograph of Bhagat Singh, and what attracts the attention of the reader, is a couplet from a poem by Russian poet NA Nekrasov written in memory of Dobrolyubov, the pre-socialist revolution Russian materialist philosopher who died almost at the same age as Bhagat Singh, at 24 years.
The couplet is:
Oh, what a lamp of reason ceased to burn,
Oh, what a heart then ceased to throb!
This is not only a most appropriate poetic manner of describing Bhagat Singh’s personality, it also brings to mind Friedrich Engels’s tribute to Karl Marx at the time of his burial in London, that “the greatest living thinker ceased to think!”
That the writer Amar Kant Jttu, a retired public relations officer of the Punjab government, wrote this book at the age of 90+ years shows what a magical effect Bhagat Singh has on people; that age is no bar from getting inspired by his personality. Perhaps, it is the other way round, it inspires people to stay young at least mentally, if not physically, as he is ever a young icon of the revolution. The only other such icon is Che Guevara.
Apart from his mother, father, and grandfather, the author has dedicated the book to the revolutionaries fighting for the establishment of ‘scientific socialism in the world!’ The dedication itself shows the expectations of the author, which are idealist in present circumstances.
The book is divided into 40 small chapters but begins with a short piece from ‘The Roll of Honour’, published long ago by Kali Charan Ghosh, a directory of Indian revolutionaries. Its title is ‘Glorious Deeds or Revolutionaries: The Salt of History’. Further, there is Bhagat Singh’s March 20 1931 letter to the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab with the title ‘The War Shall Continue’. Then come acknowledgments in which the author expresses his gratitude to authors like Howard Zinn and Eduardo Galeano whose writings like The Peoples History of the United States and Open Veins of Latin America inspired him to write this book. He is also inspired by authors like Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Rajni Palme Dutt, and Ashok Mitra, and their books and Monthly Review journals.
Before his ‘Introduction’, the author has included four short prefaces by his kin and friends, which perhaps is a sort of thanksgiving for supporting or fulfilling his desire of writing this book at a late age.
In his introduction to the book, Jttu has claimed that this book is an effort to critically analyse the three most popular icons of the freedom struggle of India– Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhagat Singh — from the prism of revolutionaries. The author thinks all three to be geniuses but opines that Gandhi and Nehru are superabundantly glorified, whereas Bhagat Singh has not been given his due. The author has taken up the task to undo this imbalance and put Bhagat Singh as a more important figure than these two icons. He has also referred to some earlier books like those of Manmathnath Gupta and Hans Raj Rehbar. He clearly states in his introduction that Bhagat Singh’s ideology was Scientific Socialism. In the next 40 chapters, Jttu tries to prove his point.
In the very first chapter – ‘Tracking down Bhagat Singh and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ — Jttu comes down rather heavily on the ‘duplicity’ of Nehru, when he refers to him as General Secretary of Congress in 1929 and publishes Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt’s June 6 Court statement in the sessions court of Delhi in ‘The Congress Bulletin’, which was widely appreciated. Incidentally, this statement in full was carried by every major daily of that time and one paper, Pioneer, even carried a version, some parts of which were objected to and not taken on record by the sessions judge concerned.
Mahatma Gandhi objected to its publication in the Congress bulletin and as per Jttu, Nehru apologised: “I am sorry you disapproved of my giving Bhagat Singh and Dutt’s statement in the Congress Bulletin. I was a little doubtful as to whether I should give it, but when I found there was a very general appreciation of it among Congress circles, I decided to give extracts. It was difficult, however, to pick and choose and gradually most of it went in. But I agree with you that it was somewhat out of place. I think you are mistaken that the statement was the work of their counsel (Asaf Ali). My information is that the council had nothing or practically nothing to do with it. He might have touched the punctuation. I think the statement was undoubtedly a genuine thing.”
Apart from the description of it as the ‘duplicity’ of Nehru, it is interesting that well-known historian VN Datta in his book ‘Gandhi and Bhagat Singh’ has described this statement to be authored by Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru himself has gone with the version of Asaf Ali when the sessions judge had questioned accused Bhagat Singh and Dutt’s competence in English to pen down such statement, to which Asaf Ali had responded what Nehru had quoted that “I may have touched upon punctuation here and there, but I had submitted what my clients had handed me over to this court’. Asaf Ali wrote this in his memoir later about this case.
Jttu has described in this statement and later on in the same case to the High Court in appeal in July 1929, as “phenomenal brilliance of Bhagat Singh.”
Incidentally, Bhagat Singh, in both the Delhi Assembly bomb case and the Lahore Conspiracy case, had chosen to argue his case and accepted only legal counsel to help prepare his defence. Asaf Ali represented BK Dutt in legal terms in the High Court and was only a legal counsel to Bhagat Singh, who did not agree with Asaf Ali’s approach of denying the act of revolutionaries to defend themselves legally.
Bhagat Singh later objected to Asaf Ali’s arguments in defence of Hari Kishan, contesting Asaf Ali denying the revolutionary act of Hari Kishan to save him. Bhagat Singh, in his two letters from Lahore Jail, one of which was even ‘lost’ (as Bhagat Singh himself referred to his ‘lost’ letter in the second letter), emphasised owning up to the revolutionary act and asserting the reasons for the act. (This author edited The Bhagat Singh Reader, pages 78-85, Harper Collins India). It is also a fact that most, rather all of the statements on behalf of Dutt or other revolutionaries from Lahore jail were drafted by Bhagat Singh, some of these statements are available in Bhagat Singh’s own recognised handwriting.
Jttu refers to Nehru’s An Autobiography ,first published in 1936, where on pages-174-76, Nehru discusses their amazing popularity as “he became a symbol to vindicate the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai and through him of the nation”. Jttu later refers to Nehru’s ‘Glimpses of World History’, in which he refers to Karl Marx and Lenin, but not Bhagat Singh and Indian revolutionaries in world history.
As per Jttu, Gandhi began his political life in India in 1915 as a British loyalist. He quotes Gandhi himself to buttress his argument. He quotes for the April 25, 1915 dinner speech at Madras, in which Gandhi pledged loyalty to the British empire. The source of this speech is the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi volume 13, pages 59-60. For enlisting into the army to fight in World War 1, Gandhi was awarded the title of ‘Kaiser-e-Hind’.
As per Jttu, the poor Indian recruits were used as ‘cannon fodder’ in the service of the British empire. He claims that before the Kaiser-e-Hind medal, Gandhi was also awarded Boer and Zulu medals during his South African stay. The author claims that Gandhi did not return these medals as Rabindranath Tagore had renounced his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.
Perhaps Jttu’s claim is unverified. Gandhi did return his Kaiser-e- Hind medal in 1920 during the non-cooperation movement and in support of the Khilafat movement, but Sarojini Naidu, also the recipient of the Kaiser –e-Hind medal returned her medal in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, like Tagore did.
The author is very critical of Gandhi, especially his support to the British colonial regime in suppressing Garhwali Rifles led by Chandra Singh Garhwali, who had refused to fire at peaceful protesters of the 1930 non-cooperation movement at Peshawar and the 1946 Royal Indian Navy revolt.
Jttu also described the March 5, 1931 Gandhi-Irwin Pact, which did not take into account the release or commutation of the death sentence of revolutionaries and only sought the release of Congress party protestors as ‘Surrender Pact’. Nehru himself had described the irony of the situation that ‘when talks will be held with British rulers–the dead bodies of Bhagat Singh revolutionaries will be staring us’ (Not exact words, but the spirit of phrase).
Jttu acknowledges in a whole chapter devoted to the issue –‘Was Mahatma Gandhi duty bound to save Bhagat Singh? And that Mahatma Gandhi did take up the issue of execution of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev many times with Lord Irwin, but Jttu’s grouse is that he was never very serious about it.
Both Bhagat Singh and Gandhi had different political perspectives and it is unfair to say, as people generally say, that Gandhi was powerful enough to save Bhagat Singh’s life. The British colonial regime was determined to hang Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev through a sham trial, as it feared the Bolshevik socialist perspective gaining ground in case Bhagat Singh was allowed to live. Probably, Gandhi faltered in not asserting his principled moral position of being anti-capital punishment, for Bhagat Singh or anyone else.
In several chapters author, Jttu narrates the factual story of Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Hindustan Socialist Republican Association/Army (HSRA), the organisations created by Bhagat Singh along with his other comrades, which are the strength of the book. The story of the Simon Commission, the killing of Lala Lajpat Rai, the assassination of Saunders, bombs in Central Assembly, Delhi, subsequent trials and court statements of Bhagat Singh, epoch-making hunger strikes in jail, and fearlessly kissing the gallows– have all been described factually but with passion.
The conclusion of the author is in the chapter titled ‘Bhagat Singh was True Marxist’. In support of his conclusion, Jttu has included some of the major ideological writings of Bhagat Singh such as ‘Letter to Young Political Workers’, ‘Court Statements’, ‘Why I am an Atheist’, and March 20, 1931 letter to Lieutenant Governor Punjab- ‘The War Shall Continue’ — and an ample number of quotations from ‘Jail Notebook’ as well as from other writings.
While everyone may not agree with the arguments of Jttu, especially about Gandhi and Nehru, it goes to the author’s credit that he directly quotes Gandhi and Nehru to build his arguments. His interpretation can be contested based on some other writings of Gandhi and Nehru, but the author cannot be blamed for misquoting them. He had, after all, in the beginning, accepted Gandhi, Nehru, and Bhagat Singh – -all three as geniuses. For Jttu, Bhagat Singh was a bigger genius than the other too. One can disagree with him, but he has the right to have his opinion.
Jttu, Amar Kant, Walking with Bhagat Singh: Soon after Independence, Delhi, Aakar Books, 2019, Pages 320, Rs 595.
The author is Former Dean, Faculty of Languages, Panjab University Chandigarh and Honorary Advisor, Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre.
Black Skin White Masks’, an Inspiration for Black Movement
Originally meant to be a doctoral thesis, Frantz Fanon’s book remains a seminal work in studying Black psyche in a White world.
Image Courtesy: Amazon.in
Who is Frantz Fanon? He is one of the foremost revolutionary thinkers from Africa and the Caribbean. He was born in Martinique, still under French control, but remained an active part of the revolutionary liberation struggle against French colonialism. Professionally he was a trained doctor of psychiatry and wrote a doctoral thesis in France on the subject. He was the son of an African origin father and an Afro-Martinican white origin mother.
During his schooling in Martinique, he came under influence of his teacher, French poet and writer Aime Cesair. Born in 1925, Fanon lived for just 36 years, dying in 1961. He left Martinique at the age of 18 years and received his higher education from University of Lyons in France. He was influenced by Marxism. While studying medicine and psychiatry at University of Lyons, he also attended lectures on literature, drama, and philosophy by French philosopher Merleau Ponty.
While studying he wrote three plays, of which two survive. He joined FLN — the anti-colonial Algerian liberation front, fighting against French colonialism. He practiced as a psychiatrist, and from his experiences, he wrote his first book at the age of 27, in 1952 — Black Skin White Masks. It was his doctoral thesis, but he submitted the thesis with some variation and published this as a book. He was detected as suffering from leukaemia, yet he continued working and just before his death, his most famous work — The Wretched of the Earth was published with an introduction by author-philosopher Jean Paul Sartre.
Fanon was impressed by Sartre’s support to the Algerian liberation war. Fanon served as the Ambassador to Ghana of provisional Government of Algeria and on its behalf attended many conferences in African countries. In 1959, his book, The Dyeing Colonialism, was published and in 1961, his magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth was published. Two collections of his shorter writings were published posthumously- Towards the African Revolution in 1964 and Alienation and Freedom in 2018.
All his books have been translated into English. Black Skin White Masks, since its first publication, is considered a seminal book; two post-modernist thinkers — Indian scholar Homi K Bhabha and British-Pakistani scholar Ziauddin Sardar — wrote forewords to the book. Its English translation was done by Charles Lam Markmaan in 1967 and was published by Groove Press. Bhabha wrote the foreword in the 1986 edition and Sardar in 2008 edition by Pluto Press London.
Sardar in his foreword explains the theme of the book as — “It is the anger of all whose cultures, knowledge systems and ways of being that are ridiculed, demonized, declared inferior and irrational, and, in some cases, eliminated.”
He further adds that while fighting against Nazi Germany from the Free France side, serving in the military, Fanon experienced racism on a daily basis. In France, he noticed that French women avoided black soldiers who were sacrificing their lives to liberate them. He was wounded; and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery during his service in the Free French forces.
After the war against Nazi Germany was over, Fanon won a scholarship to study medicine and psychiatry at Lyon. After completing his doctorate, in 1953, he was offered a job as head of the psychiatric department of Bilda- Joinville Hospital in Algiers and he jumped at the opportunity.
In Algeria a full-blown liberation struggle was going on and Fanon joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) after leaving the job in 1956. The French response was brutal. Sardar writes with sorrow that Fanon did not live to see Algeria gain full independence.
While in Ghana, Fanon was diagnosed with leukaemia. He was taken to the United States for treatment, but died there in Washington on December 6, 1961. Yet, his most influential work, The Wretched of the Earth, with the foreword by Sartre, was published before his death, which became an inspiration for the black movement throughout the world. US Black Power or Black Panthers movement was influenced by Fanon’s classic book.
As per Sardar: “Black Skin, White Masks was the first book to investigate the psychology of colonialism. It examines how colonialism is internalized by the colonized, how an inferiority complex is inculcated, and how, through the mechanism of racism, black people end up emulating their oppressors.” Sardar also quotes Indian scholar Ashish Nandy in support of his argument. Kenyan writer/scholar Ngugi WaThiongo’s book ‘Decolonizing the Mind’ was also influenced by Black Skin White Masks.
In his long foreword in 1986 edition, Indian scholar Homi K Bhabha introduces the post-modernist interpretation of Black Skin White Masks, which becomes more tedious to read than even the book, which has a complex subject, but can be understood better without the post-modernist forewords. Homi K Bhabha writes in his foreword, ‘Whenever questions of race and sexuality make their own organizational and theoretical demands on the primacy of “class,” “state” and “party” the language of traditional socialism is quick to describe those urgent, “other” questions as symptoms of petty-bourgeois deviation, signs of the bad faith of socialist intellectuals. The ritual respect accorded to the name of Fanon, the currency of his titles in the common language of liberation, are part of the ceremony of a polite, English refusal.”
He further says, “Fanon attempts such audacious, often impossible, transformations of truth and value, the jagged testimony of colonial dislocation, its displacement of time and person, its defilement of culture and territory, refuses the ambition of any “total” theory of colonial oppression.”
Moving straight to the book, Fanon in his short introduction begins with a quote from his beloved teacher:
“I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement.”
—Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le Colonialisme
Unlike his scientific subject, Fanon begins in a bit emotional poetic introduction as he explains the reason for writing this book-
“Why write this book? No one has asked me for it. Especially those to whom it is directed. Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it. Toward a new humanism. . . . Understanding among men. . . . Our colored brothers. . . . Mankind, I believe in you. . . . Race prejudice. . . . To understand and to love. . . .”
In an anguished tone at the young age of about 25, he further poses the questions-
“What does a man want?
What does the black man want?
At the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers,
I will say that the black is not a man.”
The task of the author, who is a professional psychiatrist, is to explain Black-White relations; he says:
“The white man is sealed in his whiteness.
The black man in his blackness.
We shall seek to ascertain the directions of this dual narcissism
and the motivations that inspire it.”
From his experiences in treating patients, the author gets the raw data, which is problematic:
“There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men.
There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect. How do we extricate ourselves?
A moment ago, I spoke of narcissism. Indeed, I believe that only a psychoanalytical interpretation of the black problem can lay bare the anomalies of affect that are responsible for the structure of the complex.”
One can see that the author is better able to explain the complexity of his subject than his post-modernist interpreters, who by their theoretical jargon, make the book look more complex than it actually is. The author explains the theme of the book rather clearly when he says —
‘This book is a clinical study. Those who recognize themselves in it, I think, will have made a step forward. I seriously hope to persuade my brother, whether black or white, to tear off with all his strength the shameful livery put together by centuries of incomprehension.’
Fanon goes on to describe the chapterisation of the book like a researcher. In fact, the book initially was supposed to be Fanon’s doctoral thesis, which later he changed to book format, while he submitted the thesis in a different format.
The first three chapters contain the concept and features of the Negro and later chapters take up some case studies. So, he begins the first chapter as ‘The Negro and Language’. Unconsciously or subconsciously, Negroes are natives of any colonised country in Asia or Africa; while fighting the colonial masters and getting rid of them, they try to acquire the competence in the colonial master’s language imposed upon them through administration or the education system. Fanon has discussed this trend in context of Africa, which was colonized more by the French with established hegemony of French language in the colonies. But the same is true of British colonies.
As Fanon talks about Algerian or Martinican Negroes getting mentally enslaved by the French, so has Ngũgĩ, from the British colony of Kenya, discussed in Decolonizing the Mind. In fact, Ngũgĩ changed even his Christian name James to Thiong’o wa and went back to his mother tongue Gikuyu for his creative writing, while as a Professor of Comparative Literature, he uses English for his academic writings.
Fanon is critical of those liberals who say that Negroes should be treated ‘kindly’, in a way that they pity them and make them devoid of human dignity of equality. Fanon says at one place, “What I am asserting is that the European has a fixed concept of the Negro, and there is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: “How long have you been in France? You speak French so well.”
In other words, it implies the Negro has got civilised and cultured by speaking a colonial language ‘so well’, and thus psychologically expressing the ‘superiority’ of the ‘white’!
In India, there were examples of public school educated children who were asked to speak English even in their homes and adopt an ‘accent’, say, British or American, whereas the natural accent with a Bengali, South Indian or North Indian touch is mocked, even if the written language of such persons may better than a British or American.
Fanon observes the bitter reality that “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is.” Fanon elaborates it further: “Historically, it must be understood that the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago.” Compare this with the one section among the dalit movement pleading for English as a medium and source to become part of the elite and corporate sector in India. Our old Leftist dalit intellectual Chandra Bhan Prasad is a votary of this trend.
In the second chapter, Fanon moves to a more complex subject of ‘The Woman of Colour and the White Man’. Men and women, both Whites and Blacks, get attracted to each other, sometime marry too, but somehow their mental complexes come in the way of loving each other as two free human beings without any complex of colour or race. Both have a sense of superiority and inferiority and narcissism, which reflects upon their sexual relationship as well.
The third chapter title is the reversal of the second chapter — ‘The Man of Colour and the White Woman’. As a practising psychiatrist, Fanon observes features of complexity in emotional and physical relations of both sexes culturally shaped by the sense of colour, even when they are intellectually advanced and sometimes progressive. The cultural, emotional and psychological fallout of such situations are described by Fanon in these words: “We know historically that the Negro guilty of lying with a white woman is castrated. The Negro who has had a white woman makes himself taboo to his fellows.” There are many case studies by Fanon, but his conclusion is – “We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies a restructuring of the world.” So, how to restructure the world in a non-racial, non-casteist, non-discriminatory manner?
In the fourth chapter with the title– ‘The So-called Dependency Complex of the Colonized Peoples’, Fanon debates this issue with another scholar, Mannoni, author of The Psychology of Colonization, and rebuts his arguments. Taking the example of South Africa, he says, “What is South Africa? A boiler into which thirteen million blacks are clubbed and penned in by two and a half million whites. If the poor whites hate the Negroes, it is not, as M. Mannoni would have us believe, because “racialism is the work of petty officials, small traders, and colonials who have toiled much without great success.” No; it is because the structure of South Africa is a racist structure.”
Moving further, Fanon discusses ‘The Fact of Blackness’. He reacts to others defining what a Negro is in their own definitions, to which he responds: “For my own part, I would certainly know how to react. And in one sense, if I were asked for a definition of myself, I would say that I am one who waits; I investigate my surroundings, I interpret everything in terms of what I discover, I become sensitive.” In this chapter, Fanon quotes many poems to describe the complex feelings involved even in matters of sexual relationships.
In the sixth chapter , ‘The Negro and Psychopathology’, Fanon presents a brief but deep psychoanalyses of colonised black people, and the inability of black people to fit into the norms (social, cultural, racial) established by white society (the coloniser). That “a normal Negro child, having grown up in a normal Negro family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact of the white world.” In next chapter, ‘The Negro and Recognition’, Fanon goes further deep in describing Negroes. After discussing Adler, in sub section of this chapter , ‘The Black Man and Hegel’, he examines the dialectics of the philosopher and conveys his suspicions of the black man being under the rubric of a philosophy modelled after whiteness. According to Fanon, there is a conflict that takes form internally as self-deprecation because of this white philosophical affirmation.
In last chapter, ‘By Way of Conclusion’, Fanon opines that both Blacks and Whites are torn due to the historical past of racialism and for creating a new society. He concludes the book with these words:
“It is through the lasting tension of their freedom that men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world. Superiority? Inferiority? Why not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the other, to explain the other to myself? Was my freedom not given to me then in order to build the world of the you? At the conclusion of this study, I want the world to recognize, with me, the open door of every consciousness. My final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions!
In India, too, we need to build a society where there are people who question. The weak tradition of questioning is being suppressed by the cult of Bhakti, rather Andh Bhakti (Blind Faith), against which Dr BR Ambedkar, another victim of casteism, like racialism in Africa, opined that questioning was the biggest asset of mankind and the society that stops questioning was doomed to go back to barbarism. Bhagat Singh too wrote ‘Why I am an Atheist’ by questioning every phenomenon around him.
The first step of liberation for ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, the last and classic book of Frantz Fanon, lies in his first book ‘Black Skins and White Masks’ –
“ O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”
The writer is a retired professor of JNU and an honorary adviser to the Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre, Delhi. Views are personal.
Random Thoughts-Literature and History 