Deliverance, Rudraprayag
Gurney House, Naini Tal 2 May 1926 You brother has killed leopard, almost certainly Man eater, after sitting throughout eleven Consecutive nights in same tree for him. Congratulations and thanks for whole Garhwal, Particularly from Ibboston ——Telegram to Margaret Corbett from Ibboston Deputy Commissioner, Naini Tal ———————————————————– My dear Capt. Corbett, Allow me to thank you and congratulate you from the bottom of my heart for shooting the man-eating leopard who killed so many innocent women and children in Upper Garhwal. We, the Garhwalies, will ever remember you as the killer of the greatest enemy of Garhwal. I know how difficult it was to shoot that most cunning and sly beast. Perhaps you will remember that I had a talk with you about the beast at Niani Tal in 1924. I asked you to write to me your willingness to go to Rudraprayag to shoot him under the conditions you thought most sutitable for the expedition, and I handed over your letter to the Finance Member to utilize your services; but unfortunately, the then Deputy Commissioner of Garhwal did not accept your proposals, and took other means to get the leopard killed. But finally, it is you who was able to save Garhwal from the beast. You must be very proud of wonderful deed of yours, and you fully deserve the pride and honour which we gratefully associate with your name. —–Letter to Jim Corbett from Mukandi Lal, BA (Oxon), Barrister-at-Law, Member Legislative Council Lansdowne, Garhwal, 9 May 1926 —————————————————— Dear Capt. Corbett, I am desired to thank you on behalf of the Government of the United provinces for the valuable public service you have rendered in destroying the Rudraprayag man-eating leopard. This animal has preyed on the Rudraprayag neighbourhoods for over seven years and has killed no less than 125 human victims. You have, at considerable private inconvenience, spent many weeks in pursuit of this pest and have cheerfully borne much hardship and danger. You have earned the gratitude of the people of Garhwal, and the Governor in Council desires me to send you this sincere thanks and his congratulations on a fine achievement. ——- Letter to Jim Corbett from G.B. Lambert, United Provinces Government, D.O. No. 738-Z, Naini Tal, 17 May 1926 ——————————————————— Dear Sir, I have been directed by Colonel, His Highness the Maharaja Sahib Bahadur to convey to you His Highness’ very best congratulations on your keen sportsmanship in putting an end to the notorious man eating leopard. His Highness’ very best congratulations on your keen sportsmanship in putting an end to the notorious man eating leopard. His highness also wishes me to express his great delight at your being able to get rid of that terrible enemy and pest of the public of Garhwal. You have really done a great service not only to the people of Rudraprayag but to mankind in general. With renewed congratulations and best of luck… ——– Letter to Jim Corbett from the Private Secretary to H.H. The Maharaja of Dhar, 19 May 1926 adminhumanitiesunderground.org
“Binadi, You Are Sleeping With The Light On?”
Bina Das During our stay in the Presidency jail, we used to organize functions and theatrical shows. This time there were fewer restrictions. The jail authorities helped us in setting up the stage, and we rented dresses and wigs from dressers outside. Consequently, our performances reached quite a high standard of excellence. Besides, the political prisoners decided to observe all the functions organised by parties outside on political issues. This kept us in close touch with the political world outside and this was instructive for the common prisoners. Still, at times we got bored with everything. One evening I had a strange experience, bordering on reality and illusion. Friends had decided to organise Lenin’s Day. I was usually an observer on such occasions, but this time I decided to participate and resolved to prepare an essay on the subject. So, in the evening I shut myself up in my room and with a wrapper around my feet and a lantern by my side. I reclined with a pen and paper. There was a chill in the air and I was feeling sleepy. With a firm resolution, I set myself up to the task of preparing a homage to Lenin. I had just penned a few lines when I heard a masculine voice ask me laughingly, “What are you writing?” I looked up in surprise, and there, beside my bed, I saw Lenin. My body was paralysed. Was I dreaming? But it was more real than any dream. Removing the jumble of books on my table, he said again, “Well, you did not tell me what you were writing.” Nervously, I handed him the paper. After reading it, he returned the paper with a smile on his face. Finding my tongue, I asked, “Is it too bad?” “No. Why should it be bad? You Bengalis are never amiss at writing. Creating beautiful nothings with useless words. Even your detractors will agree on this.” This sudden attack on my people angered me, and in a heated manner I rejoined, “Oh, is that all you know about Bengalis?” Lenin’s smile became gentle. “No, I did not mean to hurt you. I know how passionately dedicated you are to a cause. But that is not enough.” After a pause he continued, “It’s true, you are always ready to sacrifice everything on a moment’s impulse; but you are totally unfit for the backbreaking and laborious task of pulling up a dying nation. Unless you are ready to lose yourselves with the millions of poverty-stricken destitute… I spoke up cheerfully, “Oh, don’t you know? We have also started to think along those lines.” “Who are these ‘we’?” “Well, we the workers. Today almost all political parties are thinking of mass awakening, mass movement.” I was interrupted, “You too think in the same way?” Quite annoyed, I replied, ‘Of course, how could you even ask?” “Well there is such a world of difference between your thoughts and your actions. With my Russian intelligence, I fail to understand you.” “What difference do you find?” “What difference you ask? Your beliefs may be all right, but as a worker, you are a complete failure.” Disconnected, I stammered, “It’s true, I didn’t do much when I was outside, but I tried. I formed unions in some mills. I led the workers through a successful strike. I visited some villages. I know I did not achieve much, but you know how difficult this kind of work is.” With a gentle smile he said. “Don’t be downhearted. I am not judging you by your success. I think you don’t understand the nature of the work. Or, realizing the difficulty of the task, you delude yourself. You do not have the forbearance for such self-sacrifice.” “Why do you say that?” “You are spending years in jail, side by side with the downtrodden, poverty-stricken people of your country. But how close do you get to them. What effect do you have on their minds? Do you ever try to teach them anything?” “You know how difficult it is to reach out to them in jail?’ “Difficult,” he roared with his eyes flashing. “The word difficult does not exist in a rebel’s dictionary. If I were in your place…” “Yes?” “I would have broken down all barriers and shown them how absurd it is to try and keep people apart.” Unconvinced, I said, “ Then they would have taken you away and locked you up in a solitary cell.” ‘Well that would have given me the honour of defeat. But what are you doing? You speak of equality, but here in jail you have formed a group of elite intellectuals and are spending your days in luxury. You treat the common prisoners as your servants and have no concern at all for their well-being.” “What can we do?” “You can do everything. You can share all your privileges with them; may be it won’t be much, but it will make them think of you as their own. If you think you don’t have enough to share, you can refuse preferential treatment.” Lots of arguments came piling up: that would only allow the government to save money. Would we able to share such hardship? We were not used to it; our health would break down under the strain. What about our studies? Realising that all these arguments were mere excuses, I remained silent. Lenin continued to look at me, and after a while he asked, “ What are you thinking. It is too difficult, isn’t it? It is easier to put your head in the hangman’s noose than to bear such affliction from day to day, isn’t it so? I bowed my head in silence. Lenin stood up, “I was right. I knew it. And not only you, I know about all the jails in India. Down from Jawaharlal and Jaiprakash to the communist students and workers of today, the problem is the same. You cannot forget your superior position; you cannot forego the privileges
Dashrath’s Dinner Party
By Amiya Sen Translated from the Bengali by Bhaswati Ghosh Originally published as “Dasharather Atithijawggo” in Desh As she pulled the curtains off the doors and windows and dumped them on the floor, Shakuntala hollered, “Munga, come here, fast!” Dashrath was at the dining table, shaving. Casting a glance towards Shakuntala, he said, “Why are you taking those off yourself? Have Munga do that…if you fell down—” “That worthless servant of yours. You brought home a rascal from the orphanage. It’s eight in the morning, and he is yet to finish his work in the kitchen. A heap of clothes remains to be washed. I must load them into the washer myself and wait until the cycle is completed. If left to him, he will ruin the clothes like he did last time. Sigh, your new safari suit and Gudiya’s expensive zari-bordered lehnga-choli.” “Let it be. Where will you get a servant for 30 rupees in today’s market? We are managing just fine. Hey, Munga, get up on the stool, take down the curtains and pile them in the backyard. Then bring a duster. Clean everything in all the rooms. Khabardar, nothing should break, or else I will beat you to a pulp, you understand?” Munga, once a resident of a developmental home governed by the Delhi Administration, said with a broad, foolish smile, “Ji.” Literate and illiterate, rich and poor, all kinds of residents in the capital make use of these homes. Any mentally retarded or low-IQ child in the family is swiftly dispatched to institutions like these. The Delhi administration has opened a lot of centres for the mentally challenged. The poor occasionally come to visit their children (they grow up into young men and women in the homes, though many also die from the ‘care’ they receive from the home staff). They even take the children home during holidays. But well-to-do families are interested in only admitting their children. They return at the very end, honking their cars, to collect the dead children’s bodies. It’s a relief to keep such social disgraces away from their day-to-day lives. This has been one of the boons of independent India. Alongside running several other types of homes, the Delhi Administration carries out a lot of social welfare activities by instituting shelters for insane and mentally challenged people. This has created thousands of jobs and countless official posts. It is quite remarkable. Munga is a lucky one. He caught the attention of the superintendent and found a place in his home as a child servant, thus being spared the decrepit paradise of the government home. Of course, the superintendent had to pay a price for it every month–30 rupees. Considering the scarcity and steep cost of domestic servants in Delhi, this is a small amount. Five years ago, Dashrath Sharma, the superintendent’s brother-in-law, brought Munga to his own house. The child grew up into a young adult at his home even as Dashrath’s own fortunes blossomed. The fifteen hundred rupees that he earns as salary for the job he poses to be doing in Delhi Administration’s Social Welfare department is just his pocket money. As with many others, the job is only a front for him. His primary enterprise comprises a variety of side businesses. It began with a scooter dealership that he started with a small investment. Next, he moved to real estate. Thanks to the arrival of Maruti, he now has a dealership for automobiles. Before this, he also dealt in colour television sets for a while, but left that because of the high profitability in the auto business. In Delhi, money overflows from people’s pockets; there’s no place to store the cash. Black money can’t be stashed in banks either. This explains why even seemingly innocuous looking middle-class people have an underground basement in their house–even if it’s no bigger than a match box. One only has to place a life-size photo of Rama or Hanuman on the wall next to the stairs leading to the basement. That does it. It’s a god-fearing country after all. Even Information Bureau and Income Tax officers are forced to bow down and take leave. As two-wheelers like scooters, mopeds and motorbikes started becoming vehicles of the lower middle classes, the demand for cars was at its peak. Dashrath made the most of it. Every car brought a fat amount, including the booking cost. Most people didn’t want to remain stuck in the waiting list–they were willing to spend a few extra thousand rupees if that could get them the car faster. When Dashrath hadn’t made it big, he had also opened a marriage bureau. That brought the telephone in his house. But as the phone came to be used more for inquiring the market rates of limestone, sand and cement, the butterfly of the marriage bureau fluttered away. Not a big deal. Dashrath harbours no regrets over it. His three older brothers were reasonably well-heeled. He was way down on the scale, a member of the lower middle class. He had funded his graduate studies by offering tuition classes. After searching high and low for a job, he found one with a salary of 35 rupees. To keep the job he had to buy a bicycle in installments. That’s when it struck him that one could no longer get to the top by climbing one stair at a time. In order to succeed, it was necessary to have a political party’s support. So he joined a party. The results were instantaneous. Using the party affiliation he obtained a fake social worker certificate that got him his current job as a probational officer in the Social Welfare department. At the time, his party was a superpower–everything from the corporation to the municipality was in its control. Dashrath had to participate in some party activities, though. Dashrath Sharma was at the forefront of the mutiny that erupted in the university campus, gunning for the removal of the Vice Chancellor who came from
The Bernhard Case
Max Weber [There are many institutions of higher education—universities and research centres, where we have periodically seen academic administrators being appointed/elevated in significant positions for reasons of ideology or expediency. Each such decision hits at the very foundation of the world of ideas. In multiple ways. In this context, HUG remembers Max Weber’s classic pronouncement on The Bernhard Case] ———————————————– We have received the following from academic circles: The investigations in the press into the much discussed “Bernhard Case” have by no means put an end to the interest the case has aroused. It is, of course, scandalous that the government (or, to be precise, the minister, acting entirely on his own personal initiative, although directly influenced by the government) has imposed a professor on the largest university in Germany, and that the academic staff involved, who are among the most distinguished scholars in Germany, only learned of this fact through the press or when their new colleague paid them a visit. Such scandals are typical. Some other circumstances, however, are perhaps even more typical. Firstly, the behavior of the man who was so suddenly promoted. In the days when the writer of these lines was as young as Herr Ludwig Bernhard himself is today, it was regarded as a fundamental requirement of academic decorum for someone who had been offered a chair by the ministry to satisfy himself, before doing anything else, and before deciding whether or not to accept the offer, that he enjoyed the scientific confidence of the faculty, or at least of the most prominent of the colleagues with whom he would be working in his field; and this applied irrespective of whether or not he feared that it might create difficulties, even if these were only of a moral nature, for his appointment. Anyone who, merely because he was “in favor,” chose to disregard these generally accepted rules, in order to “get on” in the academic world, was subject to exactly the same judgment and exactly the same treatment at the hands of his colleagues as that which is meted out to people who speculate on furthering their career by taking “inferior” professorships [Strafprofessuren] for denominational or political reasons. Since it is clear that Herr Bernhard did not find it necessary to observe these rules, he has shown that he is not personally worthy of further consideration. Of more general importance, however, is the fact that this kind of attitude is evidently on the increase among a section of the new academic recruits and that moreover the Prussian Government is deliberately cultivating these types of “operators” [Geschäftsleute], as they say in academic circles. Indeed, there are professorial chairs that are regularly used as “way stations” for the sustenance of such elements. As far as the University of Berlin itself is concerned, it is, of course, true that appointment to a professorship there is generally regarded as good business in financial terms even today. But the time has passed when it was thought of as a high scholarly honor. True, even now we are happy to recognize that there are many scientists in Berlin who are genuine leaders in their various fields and are absolutely independent personalities. And yet the number of “complacent” mediocrities there, who are sought after for their very mediocrity, seems to be growing, if anything, faster than elsewhere. And then there are the people like Herr Bernhard, people for whom, from the point of view of the government, membership of the university is essentially a reward in the pecuniary sense or in the sense of social prestige. No doubt it is to some extent a welcome bonus to provincial universities that this practice enables them to retain a far greater number of outstanding scholars than would be the case if professors in Berlin were selected on solely scholarly criteria. Naturally, from the point of view of the University of Berlin, these matters are probably seen in a different light. There is a curious irony here. In a number of Berlin faculties, despite increasing numbers of students, there have been attempts, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to limit the number of professorships. Indeed, one faculty created a special statute restricting the securing of a Habilitation for academic teachers from other higher education institutions, and then promptly made use of this obstacle, which the faculty had itself created, to exclude an outstanding academic teacher from appointment as an adjunct lecturer [Privatdozent], who was acknowledged as such, against the votes of the faculty [Fachmänner]. The irony is that this same university must now accept that its university chairs are used as rewards when some ministry happens to feel the need to have politically desirable research carried out by an able young man. The price to be paid for any concessions by the faculties to inappropriate proposals, and in particular for any deviation from the principle of gaining as many highly qualified academic staff as humanly possible, will ultimately be the weakening of the moral authority of the faculties themselves. And of course the consequences of this will not be limited to cases like the present one. After all, Herr Bernhard has written a book that, allowing for a certain scholarly immaturity, I, for one, find very impressive; it is important in its field and shows a distinctiveness of method. But everyone knows that in the field of economics, for example, at least two other people are waiting outside the door of the faculty who are “deserving” in different ways, in the case of one of them for services rendered back in the “Stumm era.” Sooner or later, their time will undoubtedly come. It seems quite unlikely that the eventual successors of men such as Adolf Wagner and Gustav [von] Schmoller will be important and scientifically unique personalities. The situation is similar at the other Prussian universities. None of them today are dealing with Herr [Friedrich T.] Althoff, who despite the questionable nature of his “system” nevertheless had a certain impressiveness. Instead, for the foreseeable