Humanities Underground

Bashonti

Chandril Bhattacharya Is this Bashonti Sanyal who imprints red-lac dye and rubs lotus-petals on her palms. Is this Bashonti Mukherjee who lights candles every morning on the window sill so that her lover gets irritated Is this Bashonti Seth who plans on jumping into the pond along with her son on MonTueWed and on ThursFriSat plans without him Is this Bashonti Mondol whose short stammertongue evokes rabid jokes at the morning bakery Is this Bashonti Saha who fills up forms in such a calligraphic hand that folks mistake it for print Is this Bashonti Halder who everyday voluntarily crosses her appointed bus stop and walks back again, slipper-worn, toe-strained Is this Bashonti Sen who doesn’t kiss men who don’t smoke because men’s lips ought to be dark and bitter Is this Bashonti Ghosh who rings Thebun-mashi everyday so that she can listen at least once to her maiden petname Is this Bashonti Saha-Ray who stopped buying fish since every time she would sit on her haunches to check them out men would breathe nasty over her goosebumpy-neck Is this Bashonti Ganguly who always wears sarees and  chhichhis her husband every single time he brings her a nightie Is this Bashonti Sarkar who finds her Upanishad text every time on the third shelf Is this Bashonti Chakarborty who said “Ufff, so warm” and got herself into the fridge  and didn’t realize neighbours were arriving in droves to look at her tanpura-posterior saying “Boudi, a glass of sherbet for you” Is this Bashonti Dasgupta who created so much sound and fury while screwing that her in-laws fainted with laughter in the next room Is this Bashonti Chatterjee whom her brother-in-law ordered “Switch on the fan, woman” and as punishment clipped her nipples Is this Bashonti Laha who aimed her dartlike rubber-band perfectly at the nose of her grandfather’s portrait Is this Bashonti Roy who quotes Jibabananda Das right, left and centre so that this evening’s intellectual can suck that name from her lower lips Is this Bashonti Guha who undressed herself on the rooftop and later learnt that such cheap tactics would be censored Is this Bashonti Banerjee who put all the utensil stickers on the rear-doors and cello-tapes on her stomach and pulled them out rough one at a time Is this Bashonti Tarafdar who sent her Ma off to get some sweets so that she could close the windows and ventilators right away and hold her lover’s tool Is this Bashonti Bhattacharya who shuttles in space so that she can manage her parents’ fights and comes flying back to the loo to get the urgent job done Is this Bashonti Parui who makes boats out of foolscap papers for young birthdays and the young ones hate that kind of a gift Is this Bashonti Sarkhel who can sprout herbs on her thighs just like that and then hide them just as fast Is this Bashonti Sen-Sharma who will die before she goes to the Elgin Road crossing because she discussed divorce there one day Is this Bashonti Chowdhury who put bananas country aubergines car keys in her vagina so that no one could go to the Dakshineshwar temple that day Is this Bashonti Biswas who could not hold back puking every time her husband would swallow gloppy mucus but ended up with cheekmarks from the window bars Is this Bashonti Bardhan who midnightly stands on the verandah and a bitch makes eye contact Is this Bashonti Thakur who doesn’t care much about risks. She knows that the thin plastic bag won’t feel the hurt when it is hurled down Chandril Bhattacharya is a journalist and non-fiction writer from Kolkata. He is also the singer-songwriter in the popular music band Chandrabindu. The Bengali version of this poem was published in the magazine Apar in 2011. adminhumanitiesunderground.org

Anger, Us & HumanitiesUnderground

Prasanta Chakravarty To the HUG blog, WordPress says: ‘you have reached the goal of 75 posts’. A year ago, one didn’t begin with any goal. It was an angry morning, I recall, needless perhaps, when this FB page was made in 10 minutes flat. Angry because of specific events at the place where I work, an anger also directed towards myself for being unable to really do anything, not being able to tell and get people together, for failing to think absurdly and yet strategically. Most of all, for opting out sometimes in difficult situations. That anger throbs in the ‘about’ section on the FB page still. There is also a hint of a purported ‘we’ there—a rather self-conscious ‘we’: those who care about and love art, literature and life in general. And a not-so-veiled reference to others those who do not care, and those who actually seek to demolish that zeal in conscious ways too. A year later I wonder both about the anger and us. As I look closely and more empirically into the various categories under which individual essays have been slotted (and that slotting no doubt has a subjective bias) – I see 27 pieces under Political and 21 under Aesthetics. These are the largest ones, followed by Popular (17), Literature (15), History (13), Records (12) and Ethics (11). One can see that HUG, in a manner, wonders about the processes, inspirations and reception of literature and art. It is thoroughly invested in questions of form and symbols, no doubt. And yet, it will not let pass so easily and so liberally what goes by the name of such bunkum as world literature, local kitsch, communicative safe havens and so forth. And yet I wonder about the robustness of the anger. The element of anger – so important for any oppositional position – how can that be without fanfare and yet be deeply involved, in order to gauge a problem or help come out of a predicament?  Or conversely: what about mitigating, whispering takes and positions that hark so sharply and so nonchalantly to positions of power and channels of prejudice that they are often taken aback simply by the hard hitting, expansive love of the writers for their subject matter? Authority is often most bewildered by largeness of heart; for it is precisely that which its worldview lacks and wishes to suppress. Such love channelizes anger, gives it a shape—does not seek to manage it or impart it with a meaningless woozy empathy. I notice that quite a few of our contributors have given rage such steely edges in their pieces and have actually spoken out against our antagonists despite never naming them explicitly. What I am trying to emphasize is the Underground element in our forum and its contours—for there is also an obverse problem: suppose (and I often feel that in the FB space at least) this becomes one more space for woolly liberal intervention?  It is a problem of being able to share a democratic space and yet mark its boundaries. One thing is certain among various uncertainties (a room for HUG, anyone?):  HUG  wishes to steer clear of such meaningless ‘rethinkings’ and ‘interferences.’ This is a place to relax and carouse too—not for busybodies to cast their nets. So, I am mildly alarmed when I see a surfeit of announcements about this music festival or that series on our education policy on FB . This salad-bowl approach compromises the Underground aspect of HUG, and tends to co-opt it into the so-called great synergy of humanities studies. And this leads me to the other point about ‘we’ and ‘us’ here—the sharing members of this community. The FB blurb again evokes, I notice, an electronic cooperative group of sorts, that might—by its sheer sharedness of purpose and conviction in/about the humanities—be able to hold the antagonist at bay. Keep at tenterhooks at least. HUG, as a platform, a year or so ago, invoked the motley nature and the we-ness of art practitioners and critics alike, in a way that they come together in opposing the crassness of apolitical and the un-aesthetic being.  That motto I think still holds good – antagonistic politics and art cannot be exchanged for agonistic and humane worldviews. HUG baulks at such a prospect. But we had also talked about a reverse craftiness and insidiousness in the face of the marauding dogmatists of all hues – chiefly utilitarians and other rational sentimentalists now.  But perhaps this we-ness needs also to be self-reflexive, so as to steer clear of the easy hubris of righteousness. Do-gooding and instruction, this Horatian grammar school premise of ‘doing’ art – HUG shuns with all its might. So, while we mark and celebrate our collective platform, may we also not come into easy and premature consensus about our objectives. I wish that our we-ness remains forever unstable. May HUG retain a certain quirkiness and not get institutionalized into a purpose. Prasanta Chakravarty  teaches English Literature at the University of Delhi. adminhumanitiesunderground.org

The Multicultural Empire

Saroj Giri Unfortunately Niall Ferguson has managed to distract Pankaj Mishra from the main theatre of empire-building today which is more than just western superiority or domination. Both reify ‘western domination’, crediting it with an unmerited force and power. Apropos Pankaj Mishra’s attack on Niall Ferguson, ‘Watch this man’ (London Review of Books, Nov 3, 2011), what if the latter had responded by simply quoting the Indian Prime Minister about the benevolence of empire: “Our notions of the rule of law, of a constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilization of India met the dominant empire of the day. These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served our country exceedingly well.” Colonialism, thus understood, was a ‘meeting’ and exchange, not a repressive imposition of structural violence. This is the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh speaking at Oxford University in 2005. Singh is leader of the Congress party, the same party which spearheaded the ‘freedom movement’ with leaders like Gandhi and Nehru. When the ‘victims’ are so consenting and willing to embrace empire, why make things difficult for them (they need a face saver don’t they?) by making aggressive declarations of western superiority – but this is precisely what Ferguson does, even putting off some ‘liberal imperialists’. He laments, for example, that “the United States dare not call itself empire” – it does not occur to him that this bluster might just not be needed. Not speaking of itself formally as empire might be a better strategy and modality of functioning – not necessarily a weakness as Ferguson suggests.  The old direct racism too is no longer the most crucial component of imperialism today. Mishra concurs: “hardly anyone is a racist in the Stoddardiansense today”. So if the prime modality of imperialism today is to function without calling itself empire or without ‘Stoddardian racism’, what sense does it make to take Ferguson so seriously? It just shows the failure or refusal to oppose empire in its new modality which is less about the schematic picture of ‘West versus the Rest’ and more about the west and the rest, as the Indian PM makes clear. Empire has become reflexive and the victim’s complicity is now assumed. The victim is the new victor – a vindication of empire. You might still have someone like Ferguson waxing eloquent about western superiority, but with the ‘colonized’ themselves taking up the task, Ferguson’s looks like one-upmanship. China and Gandhi might not have been given adequate space in Ferguson’s account, as Mishra argues, but they are not excluded in the actual functioning of empire. One can go through an entire imperialist trope here about the ‘great contributions’ of the ‘great civilizations’ of China and India. In any case, the ‘rising powers of the East’ are not interested in getting equal with ‘western civilization’ as such. Their rising power is more about a very bland, competitive approach – ‘it is good to be rich’, as they say in China. Or you have the popular ‘techlit’ Indian writer Chetan Bhagat prodding Gen Y to ‘forget history’ and leave that to corrupt politicians who needed something to fight over – instead focus on high growth and a strong India. Bhagat is hot among the new urban middle classes along with Thomas Friedman of ‘The World is Flat’ fame. Friedman is of course not very different from Ferguson in making big claims about the decline of the west and the United States not striking hard enough. Ferguson might think of the ‘work ethic’ as western but this is not the nineteenth century – Amy Chua for one counts this as what defines the Chinese today. The Indians too fervently claim this mantle. Ferguson’s narrative of western superiority and his language of empire are not welcomed by ‘liberal imperialists’ – who know that this will place US power on a very insecure and narrow footing, making those like the Indian PM difficult to include in the project. Even US military folks find it difficult to swallow Ferguson’s hawkishness, making light, for example of the report of tortures at Abu Ghraib. Unfortunately Ferguson has managed to distract those like Mishra from the main theatre of empire-building today which is more than just western superiority or domination. Ferguson as much as Mishra reify ‘western domination’ and give it a force and power which is not really false but is highly ideological. Ferguson seems to have successfully provoked a misdirected anti-imperialism – thus Mishra conflates Ferguson’s narrative with empire’s dominant idiom of functioning. And then it turns out, even this narrative cannot, as Mishra clarifies in his reply, be surely placed alongside Stoddardian racism: Ferguson “lacks the steady convictions of racialist ideologues like Stoddard”. This is not to say that opposing racism need not be part of challenging empire: it can and must be part of a good anti-imperialist politics – as any attempt to figure out why few blacks participate in the Occupy movement will make clear. However, focusing on older direct racism can also be part of another deeper attachment, which can undermine anti-imperialism. This is the unstated attachment to reflexive capitalism, reflexive empire which is all multicultural and accommodative – and feels discursively violated, wronged when someone expresses ‘extreme’ views. Mishra, focusing primarily on the ‘racism’ part rather than on the ‘empire-building’ part makes it appear as though the primary charge against Ferguson is about his being less-than-multicultural in focusing on western superiority, rather than the far more serious charge of being on the side of the 1%. Mishra did a good job cutting Ferguson down to size. But he ends up taking too much advantage of the dominant approach of political correctness, aiming mainly at shaming Ferguson. He claims the high ground within a supposed ‘right-thinking’ public sphere,