My Bengal Kamala Lecture January 10, 2013 It Is a Privilege to Be Asked to Give the Kamala Lecture. It Would Be, for Anyone
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My Bengal Kamala Lecture January 10, 2013 It is a privilege to be asked to give the Kamala Lecture. It would be, for anyone. I offer my gratitude to my esteemed friend Shri Justice Chittatosh Mukherjee and to Vice Chancellor Suranjan Das for affording it to me. In my case, as notable as the privilege, is an accompanying presumption. I will explain both. The privilege first. That comes not just because the endower is the unparalleled Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, in width of vision panoramic, in depth of insight oceanic, in height of stature Himalayan, in length of service to society, epic. As also, in richness of interests so wonderfully eclectic as to collect rare works encompassing calligraphy, iconography, photography and , with equal panache – pornography. Not just because the endowee (if such a phrase exists) is the distinguished Calcutta University. Not just for those reasons sufficient unto themselves as they are , but because the endowment comes from the most precious, the tenderest, the purest relationship on earth – that of a father and his daughter. Janaka and Sita, Kanva and Sakuntala, Asoka and Sanghamitra, Shah Jahan and Jahanara, Alauddin Khansahib and Annapurna Devi but typify an equation that is made of the purest essences of Creation. Not that we do not have examples of that bond being rough-handled by fathers. Begum Akhtar's life shows how that too can happen. It only follows that the loss of that relationship or even an abridgment of it has to be one of the greatest, the cruellest and the most God-questioning deprivations in life. Lear’s death-indicting wail, presented this very winter in Kolkata – as the scholar Dr Uma Das Gupta tells me – by the ageless Soumitra Chatterjee has been vivified in Sunil Chatterjee’s translation – Kaeno ekti kukur-er, ekti ashwo-er , eedur-er-i thakbey jiban ,aar tumi shudhu niswas rohito ? Those who have read Bibhutibhusan’s immortal novel (which I am yet to do) and those who have seen Satyajit Ray’s lyrical film of it can never forget Kanu Banerji’s portrayal of Harihar’s aortic scream at the loss of his Durga. Early into my five years’ stay in Kolkata, hearing a chance remark of mine, the then Chief Minister Sri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had a special screening of the film done for me and my wife at Nandan. Did Bibhutibabu entrance us ? Did Satyajit-babu ? Or was it Rabibabu’s soul-churning theme tune that keeps step with Apu’s trundling, Sarbajaya’s anxious arrhythmia, old Indir’s indignant exiting and redemptive returning and, last but not the least the sinking, slowly, of the missing beads, in the village’s moss-laden pond of memories ? Shob, Rabibabu’ r ek tune-er bhitar. As we left the small theatre , Buddhababu joined us in the foyer. Who was Governor, who was Chief Minister ? We were shudhu digits , helpless, perhaps hopeless, voiceless grubs, inching towards some sense, some meaning to be found in the alphabet of life, its howling vowels , stuttering consonants. Death is the ultimate extinction of bonds but there can be other infractions as well, such as seeing one’s daughter leaving her parental home after her wedding. Like the nectar of its seed in an almond’s tiny casement , Tagore fills his short story ‘Kabuliwala’, with that particular pain. The story of the nut seller Rahmat’s love of his daughter in far-off Afghanistan and his transposing of that, across sand dunes and rocky escarpments, on to Calcutta’s little Mini is not what Tagore got his Nobel for. But it is for me what no Nobel can measure. In the Bimal Roy film , Mini, not so little now, is to be married. Vermilion has climbed on her forehead, coloured the ridges of her feet. Balraj Sahni as Rahmat , fresh out of prison, says to her in an unmistakable Hindustani accent : “Khoki, tomi ki soshurbari jabish? ” . Those words have in them the humour that hammocks pain, the pain that cradles philosophy. Tagore has Mini’s father, very bhadra, very compassionate, advise Rahmat to return to Afghanistan and to his daughter. “Rahmat, tumi deshey tomar mey-er kachhey phiriya jao; tomarder milon-sukhey amar Mini-r kalyan ho-ouk ”. Bimal Roy’s Hindustani film has the father give to the Kabuliwala the money he might need for the journey. This is the money he has set apart for the wedding illuminations. He gives it with the words : Ek baap ko uski aankhon ka noor mil jaye, toh yehi sabse badi roshni hogi. What is Bangla, what is Hindustani before the truth of a father’s jnana ? Sir Ashutosh was being all of ‘father’, a father of some means, when he sought to sublimate the loss of his aankhon kaa noor , and metamorphose it into an after-life roshni . It is a privilege to salute him. Coming to my presumption, a little historical exegesis will explain it : Eighty four years ago, about five years after Sir Ashutosh’s demise and some three or four years into this lecture series, a dashing physician and Congress politician in this city was in discussion with the Calcutta University authorities of the day. Together they decided that Mahatma Gandhi – none other – be invited to deliver the Kamala Lecture, that year. The physician – Dr B.C.Roy, 40 years young – was the one to , shall we say , bell the goat . And in a hand-written letter he asked Gandhi to deliver the Kamala lecture and even suggested the subject – “The Future of India” – no less. At that point in time, Gandhi was the future of India. The British Raj of the day , strong and imperious, was as alienated from the people it was ruling as it could be and with Lala Lajpat Rai receiving a Simon Commission lathi land on his brave and proud chest, India’s nationalist thermometer was on the climb. Bhagat Singh in the land of the five rivers , Jatin Das and the great names which were to be sounded and re-sounded two years later on a crackling night at Chittagong, were mounting the scaffold of martyrdom. Here, in and around this very University , Time was readying Bina Das, firm of commitment but , fortunately for Governor-Chancellor Jackson, very un-firm with fire-arms to reach out to a pistol. And Subhas Chandra Bose , working towards the largest Congress session ever to be held that year in Calcutta was seen for the first time in military-type gear, evoking awe and a new self-confidence. As he drove around the citry’s streets , a mother could be heard telling her little son ‘ Oi amader Subhas Chandra Basu aschen. Hat jor kore nomoskar koro baba …’ And even in the unlikely world of football, Gostha Paul , with his talent for athletics , was giving the lie to the belief that Indians were physically a weak people. ‘Oh my Gosh, around this time, was about Gostha. The two sides – the Raj and its opponents – were as tactically matched as they were valuationally mismatched. And the Raj looked in every part the oxymoron that it was – a powerful but bad joke. And quietly, like a village ditty sung under one’s breath , Bibhutibhusan’s Pather Panchali appeared that very year in serialized form. Not too many read it at the time but those who did doubtless found in its lines a sense of two Indias and two Bengals co-existing uneasily , one that was about fantasies of power and the other about reality, one about the Bengal of vainglory and the one recognized and felt as ‘my Bengal’, There was thus a logic to inviting the Mahatma to speak on ‘the future of India’. But logic and the Mahatma did not always go together. He relied most of all on that enigmatic thing he described as his ‘inner voice’ , wholly inaudible to others and when heard through Gandhi’s own explanations of it, wholly befuddling. Gandhi pondered Bidhan-babu’ s invitation and , inner voice acoustics firmly in place, replied : “Dear Dr Bidhan… Apart from the fact that as a non-cooperator I may have nothing to do with the university that is in any way connected with the government, I do not consider myself to be a fit and proper person to deliver Kamala lectures. I do not possess the literary attainment which Sir Ashutosh undoubtedly contemplated for the lecturers.” Whatever else the grandson may or may not have inherited from the grandfather, he has not inherited the gift of brevity. Eighty four years on, with the British Empire resting retired in the pages of history books , the Republic of India is acknowledged as one of the world’s tallest democracies. Yet, who can deny that it is undergoing a deep decline in self-esteem ? Elected representatives of the people have status. But status is one thing, stature is another. Politics is not the nation’s most admired vocation, nor are politicians the public’s darling. Political leaders being driven round on a city street anywhere in today’s India would receive partisan cheers with slogans preceding and following them but would any one of them make a mother tell her little child, ‘Hat jor kore nomoskar koro, baba? I wonder. And just as in 1928, so too now two Indias are to be seen. One the India of financial and technological clout, the other of multiple vulnerabilities. And violence is in the air. Men and women are reaching out , firm of commitment and equally firm of hand, to guns. Most of these are illegal. None of them the less lethal for being so.