Poet as Bengal's prophet

Chandan Mitra
The Pioner, 17 March

The more I recall my childhood reading of Rabindranath Tagore, the more prophetic his uncanny perceptions appear. It is remarkable how in the most prolific phase of his creativity more than 80 years ago India's first Nobel laureate wrote poems and passages that have timeless applicability. Take his short poem, Dui Bigha Jomi, for example. It narrates the pathos of a marginal farmer who possessed just two bighas of land. One day, the local zamindar took it away from him, forcing the poor man out of home, hearth and village. Many years later, he returned to his abandoned homestead and overpowered by nostalgia trudged to the plot of land that once belonged to him.

It was an emotional reunion between an ordinary peasant and a piece of land he was passionately attached to. To wallow in reminiscences, he rested under the shade of a mango tree he had planted long ago. It had blossomed over the years and was laden with ripe fruits at that time of year. As he caressed his memories, two mangoes dropped beside him as if by way of loving recognition. Even as the hapless farmer tearfully acknowledged what he thought was a divine blessing, the zamindar's musclemen came swooping down accusing him of stealing their master's fruit. He was dragged into the landlord's house where fawning courtiers abused and humiliated the indigent farmer, charging him with shameless theft. The powerful man who had snatched away those paltry two bighas did not even recognise its original owner. As he was turfed out with dire warnings, the two mangoes forcibly seized, the farmer lamented to himself:

Ei jagatey haye, shei beshi chaye/Jaar ache bhoori-bhoori,
Rajar hasto korey samasto kangaler dhan churi...
Tumi maharaj, sadhu holey aaj/Aami aaj chor botey!

(In this world, alas, the greediest are those who have the most. The kings' nature is to rob the poor of whatever they possess...
What irony! The landlord is feted for honesty while I am supposed to be a thief today!)

This is precisely what is happening in West Bengal under the CPI(M)'s "dictatorship of the proletariat". The proletariat is the target of land grabbers, the wretched of the earth are fair game for slaughter by the state, for everything is justified to preserve the privileges of the dictators.

Even as the so-called communists hobnob with migrant non-Bengali moneybags, property developers and crony capitalist interlopers, the State's fertile agricultural lands are being mercilessly seized for the benefit of industrialists domestic and foreign. Is it any wonder that after the Singur experience, the farming community in East Medinipur's Nandigram has risen in revolt?

Predictably, the CPM is unfazed, determined to brazen out all shades of criticism. This is how communists always react for they seriously believe only they enjoy the monopoly of the truth. Introspection is not a word listed in the communist lexicon. This is how the character of World War II changed overnight. It was an "imperialist war" for the duration of the Stalin-Ribbentrop Pact, when Moscow tacitly applauded Hitler's marauding forces, kept silent on the repression of Jews, and immensely enjoyed the military discomfiture of the Allies. When the wily Hitler broke the deal and attacked the Socialist Fatherland, the War got converted into "People's War", to be waged in defence of "democracy".

Thus, the Quit India movement prompted Indian communists to openly act as informers against the Congress for the colonial intelligence.

The old adage that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it seems prophetic in the contemporary context too. While the West Bengal unit of the Congress has described the Nandigram incidents as "genocide" and demanded imposition of President's Rule, the party's High Command does not even dare to suggest that CPM even restore "Rule of law" in Bengal!

CPM's defence of the indefensible actions of Bloody Wednesday (March 14) is a hilarious litany of concoctions. I heard them arguing with journalists in Parliament's Central Hall last Thursday that the country ought to be grateful to the Buddhadeb regime for "retrieving" Nandigram for India! According to their convoluted logic, the region had been taken over by Naxalites and, believe it or not, "Muslim obscurantists"! Allegedly, between Left and Right radicals, all vestige of Government authority had been forced out of a cluster of villages. The mullahs led by the Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, allegedly didn't want family planning and pulse polio campaigns to succeed, while the Naxalites were attempting to create a Che Guevara style "liberated zone".

So, West Bengal's patriotic police, under the inspired guidance of CPM cadres steeped in Marx-Lenin-Buddhadeb Thought, braved the bullets of dangerous anti-national forces to accomplish the grand mission of Nandigram's reintegration! That, in the process nearly 20 people were killed, scores grievously hurt, journalists forced to stay out of the cordoned area, were merely unavoidable collateral damage. What was not stated was that "recapture" had become essential for the land had been pledged to Indonesia's Salem Group to set up a convenient chemical hub close to the Haldia port. They have already been allotted a sizeable amount of arable land near Kolkata for something called Mahabharat Scooters, slated to produce an unheard-of two-wheeler named Arjun!

When Bajaj scooters are the world's number one brand in the genre, why should anybody in his right mind buy Arjun? Unless, of course, the party directs each member to become a salesman for 'Red' Salem, which is quite within the realms of possibility!

Levity apart, the most important by-product of the Singur-Nandigram outrages is that the CPM, with nearly three-fourth majority in the West Bengal Assembly, has suddenly forfeited the moral right to rule. As a student decades ago, I read a book titled Moral Economy of the Peasant with reference to farmers in Java, Indonesia. Its writer had aptly portrayed the strong sense of right and wrong that prevailed in rural society. Without being a historian or sociologist, Mahatma Gandhi had grasped peasant morality with exceeding perceptiveness. Which is why he succeeded in the face of British imperial might. When a regime loses the moral right to rule, as communists did in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, no amount of force can hold its edifice together.

Right-wing dictatorships in Marcos's Philippines and Reza Shah Pahlavi's Iran, failed equally in the long run.

Bullets silence people but temporarily. Silently, Bengal must be recalling Rabindranath's questions to God in anguish over the Jalianwala Bagh massacre:

Kontho amaar ruddho ajike, banshi sangeet-hara, amaboshyar kaara,
Lupto korechho amaar bhubon dusshopner toley,
Tai to tomay shudhai oshrujoley:

Jahara tomar bishayechhey bayu, nibhaechhey tobo aalo,
Tumi ki taader khoma koriachho? Tumi ki beshechho bhalo?

(My voice is choked, my flute plays music no more; it's dark like a prison cell in a moonless night. My world has dissolved under a nightmare. That's why I ask with tears in my eyes: Those who poisoned the environment you created, extinguished the lamps you lit, have you forgiven them? Have you loved them?)