For Some Gup-Shup (Conversation With Laughter) In Faridabad
Faridabad Majdoor Samachar To contribute to radical social transformations that are mushrooming all over the world, feel free about : stammering, fragmentariness, incoherence, missing steps…. Social (and natural) reality are very complex and dynamic. Leaps in interactions amongst seven billion human beings are on our agenda. It is only in the present that we can act/prepare to act. What to do and what not to do, how to do and how not to do are coloured by the different facets/ sectionalities in the present and also carry deep imprints of the past but also different pasts of locations/groups. So a request: Try not to be polemical; try not to attempt to clinch arguments; try to respect your own selves (by implication you will respect those around you). Primarily it is to act, it is for better actions that this gup-shup is premised on. “Cataclysmic event” language and imagery seems problematic; languages and imageries that are premised on active participations of seven billion human beings are indispensable for radical social transformations. A technical constraint in the gup-shup is that we will be using mostly English language. Some Statements Etcetera * Small groupings of human beings called birth a shraap (curse) or the fall. Half of their numbers, females were described as sin personified. What was tragic for small groupings is today a tragedy for all human beings, for all living species, for the earth. * It does not seem that something had to happen, rather possibilities and probabilities seems to be the norm. But, once a possibility gets concretized, it has a dynamic and trajectory specific to it. * Relationship between a part and the (immediate) whole. Harmony and conflict between parts and the whole seem to be the norm. Small groupings of human beings embarked on a trajectory wherein the part attempts to control, dominate, mould the whole. Other-ing unleashed – series of “the other – others.”. * Domestication of animals led to the domestication of human beings, slave owners and slaves. * Deformation of communities, emergence of “I” with men as its official bearers. Man woman relations become very problematic. Today, by and large, women and children are also bearers of “I”. “Who am I?” has become a universal question. * Certainty of death after birth becomes unbearable for any “I”. Attempts at immortality. Search for amrit (the nectar of life) Philosophies of rebirth, heavan, hell. Theories of lineage. Tragedies of Alexanders – great thinkers, great warriors, great artists, great sportspersons, great performers, great leaders….. * From “who am I?”, we have entered a phase where there are many an “I” in each “I”. In the process of transcending “I” we seem to have come to the era of ekmev (unique) andekmaya (together). ———————- * Discriminations became rampant amongst human beings. It was a corollary of othering and dominating – controlling – moulding. All discriminations. must be opposed. The question is: How? Discrimination are a breeding ground for all sorts of identity politics. An exemplary end-result is the constitution of the state of Israel. This is how discriminations are not to be opposed. The ways of opposing discriminations should be such that discrimination as such comes into focus. * From domestication of animals to agriculture, from slave-owners and slaves feudal lords and serfs increased the groupings of human beings that led tragic lives. Trade, long distance trade further increased these numbers. But during all this time large groupings of human beings lived in natural surroundings. It is only during the last two hundred years, it is only after steam and coal power was harnessed by human beings that a leap change began. Internal combustion engine, electricity, atomic energy, electronics magnified the leaps in the changes and have brought us face to face with their dire consequences. * It was production for the market that led the onslaught. Artisans and peasants producing for the market using their own and family labour became redundant. For two hundred years now they are face to face with social death and social murder. Peasants and artisans in their Luddite incarnation in England attacked factories at night. Some of them were gunned down and hanged, many became wage-workers or shopkeepers or social outcastes, beggars etc., And many were forced out to the Americas and Australia. A corollary of of the inability to tame-domesticate people in America – Australia was the massive increase in slave-trade in Africa, indentured labour in India, for production for the market. * Steam and coal driven machinery had made large numbers of people in Europe superfluous. The entry of electronics in the production processes has made still more people superfluous….. Its impact on hundreds of millions of peasants, artisans, shopkeepers, in Asia, Africa, South America is devastating and at an electronic pace. They have nowhere to go. There are no “empty americas”. Desperation borne of social death and social murder of peasants, artisans, shopkeepers is the cause of hundreds committing suicides and similar numbers taking up arms in various garbs. Napoleon’s army is miniscule vis-a-vis the militarization in the world today but it is still too small for the desperate hundreds of millions. So, besides state armies there are mushrooming proto-state armies. Desperation of hundreds of millions of peasants, artisans, shopkeepers is increasing the fragility of state apparatuses. Outside of western Europe, Japan and North America this is a very important social setting for attempts at radical social transformations. * In the initial stage of production for the market using wage-labour, factories were owned by individuals. The unfolding of the process led to factories being owned by groups of individuals, by a dozen or so stock holders. The requirements for establishing and running a factory soon started demanding the pooling of resources by thousands. Share holding of thousands became the “owner” of the factories. Needs of increasing size and resources made share holding inadequate and loans emerged as the major source of funds for establishment and functioning of factories. Pension funds, insurance
Post-colonial Kali
Arindam Chakrabarti Before Independence, patriotism often took the shape of mother-worship. The rhetoric of ‘sacrifice’ or balidaan bridged the gap between the political and the religious. In these post-patriotic times, should we, globalized urban intellectuals, indulge in the easy reductive ‘analysis’ of Kalification of the homeland as a psychosis of the colonized bhadralok’s threatened masculinity, the quixotic blood-thirst of a bunch of emasculated wordy nerds? In certain quarters, not only is it ‘cool’ to deride Bankimchandra’s Vande Mataram and Sri Aurobindo’s Motherland obsession but it would be ‘positively uncool’ to be aroused by the part of Tagore’s Janaganamana where the country is hailed as a mother. When that song was sung in a National Congress session, in the presence of, but not in praise of, King George V, certain cynics spread the rumour — apparently all the way up to Yeats and Ezra Pound — that the adhinayaka addressed was the King of England. In response to this debunking spin, Rabindranath had the following to say: “That great Charioteer of man’s destiny in age after age could not by any means be George V or George VI or any George. Even my ‘loyal’ friend realized this; because, however powerful his loyalty to the King, he was not wanting in intelligence.” Unfortunately, among 21st century www-intellectuals, there seems to be no want of such people wanting in intelligence. Some of them may scream in post-colonial petulance: “How could even Rabindranath, who disliked nationalism as much as he hated fascism, address the ‘divine dispenser of India’s destiny’ as a ‘Maa’ (4th stanza)? How disappointingly communal!” Of course, Rabindranath was no Tantrik Hindu. Indeed, it would be an understatement to say that Rabindranath was uncomfortable with the image of Kali the Mother about whom Vivekananda wrote one of his most majestic and deeply personal poems. For Rabindranath, a sophisticated aniconic Brahmo, Kali’s nudity, her skull-necklace, her bloody sword, and lolling tongue must have been abhorrent on multiple levels. As a colonial subject, valourizing the Indian civilization as philosophically majestic, morally pure, aesthetically enchanting and spiritually lofty, he must have found goddess Kali to be much more of an embarrassment than Krishna, the other dark and devious divinity with whose iconography at least the young Rabindranath (of Bhanusingher Padaavali) was almost in love. His novel Rajarshi as well as his play Visarjan feature a Kali temple on top of a hill in Tripura as a seat of violence and intrigue. The plot centres on the abolition of animal sacrifice by a humane king of Tripura who is pitted against the machinations of a power-thirsty priest called Raghupati, who tries to inflame a mutiny, dethrone the king, and abet the weak, envious younger brother of the king to fratricide. The play — a passionate argument against the divisive religious politics of bloodshed — climaxes at the scene where this devout Kali worshipper, now badly defeated, rebukes the stone idol and throws “her” out from the temple down into the river, out of sheer frustration and a crisis of faith. Interestingly, the young Rabindranath would act in this very role of a disillusioned priest-villain and would imaginably enthral the audience with the vitriolic crescendo of an anti-Kali speech. “Kali the Mother” does not afford us any softer face in Swami Vivekananda’s English poem, “For Terror is Thy name/ Death is in Thy breath/ Thou ‘Time’, the All-destroyer!/ Come, Ov Mother, come! Who dares misery love/And hug the form of Death/ To him the Mother comes.” It would be a mistake to associate the word “Terror” here with the ‘terrorism’ of the Ullaskar or Jugantar brand. Before ‘hugging the form of death’ at half the age till which Tagore lived, Vivekananda had gone to Kashmir where he wrote that poem. During this stay, while ritually worshipping Khir Bhavani, he had the thought: “Mother Bhavani has been manifesting Her Presence here for untold years. The Mohammedans came and destroyed Her temple, yet the people of the place did nothing to protect Her. Alas, if only I were then living, I would not have borne it, I would have protected the temple from the invaders.” He, then, distinctly heard the voice of the goddess saying: “It was my desire that the Mohammedans destroy the temple. It is my desire that I should live in [a] dilapidated temple, otherwise, can I not immediately erect a seven-storied temple of gold here if I like? What can you do? Do I protect you or do you protect me?” The present day chariot-driving ‘protectors’ of Ram and Durga should heed these words of the Mother, in front of whose idol we have always sung: “My mother’s image by error with clay I want to shape/ this Ma is not earth’s girl, vain toil, with clay I sweat… My mother has three eyes: sun, moon, and holy fire. Is there an artisan, to build me such a one?” (Translation: Gayatri Spivak). If the maternalization of language or land is necessarily abjured because of its suspected Hindutva roots, then what do we do with the national anthem of Bangladesh — also composed by Rabindranath — which uses “Ma” as a refrain, with no trace of militarism? This whole essay was sparked off by a sequence of emotions I felt when I first heard the new 2011 Janaganamana recording by 39 musicians on YouTube this year. First I was just viscerally moved to tears by it, simply by the variety and richness of styles. The emergent rasa that enraptured me was not Veera but a sublime blend of Adbhuta and Shanta rasa, like one relishes the cosmic form of Krishna, in the 11th chapter of the Bhagavadgita, with. But then I was embarrassed by my own reaction. I had never noticed the presence of the ‘Mother’ in that song (4th stanza) before. Durga Puja was drawing near. There was nostalgia in the air, reminding me of the completely non-sectarian atmosphere of our home Puja at Mominpur where the local rich Muslim family would pay for the sweets on the Ashtami day’s bhog. Was there a secret Hindutva skeleton inside my anti-nationalist closet? Or is senility softening me like the Marxist
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