Author: Udayan Namboodiri
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 17, 2006
In my last despatch, I'd talked about a certain
insanity streak in our politicians. The observation shocked many, particularly
because it came from a journalist who'd just crossed the great Rubicon between
the observation gallery and the ring. How, many wonder out loud, can it be
that a nation is led by loonies and semi-lunatics?
Well, I wish I had the answer to that. But,
let's just take it backwards. We, the newspaper reading elite, know only about
famous political leaders. Most of us don't care to know about the years between
his original response to the primal calling to join public life and its successful
implementation as a Member of Parliament or Legislative Assembly or Minister.
The chattering classes don't care to find
out the struggles on the way, the myriad instances when he felt tempted to
return to "normalcy" but couldn't. That's because there is no tradition
of political literature in this country. We don't yet have a body of creative
work delving deep into the political psyche of the collective Indian, leave
alone the individual player.
First the original impulse. Let's face it.
Very few people feel stirred by events around them. Least of all the class
that I had been brought into. The other day, I went for dinner at one of the
old British clubs of Kolkata where I bumped into an old schoolmate from St
Xavier's. He told me he's a leading national stockbroker today and I reacted
like its only the normal thing for a Xaverian to do at 42. But when I told
him that I'd decided to contest elections, and that too in West Bengal, he
told me point blank that I was mad.
I recalled an observation I'd made years earlier
in my first book, St Xavier's - the making of a Calcutta institution (Penguin-Viking,
1995) about how the classes that availed British, liberal education disgraced
itself by keeping out of the freedom movement through the 1930s. While researching
that book, I went through the college magazines published by students of not
just St. Xavier's, but also Presidency, La Martiniere, Scottish Church and
other colleges. I was surprised at the tenor of frank hostility that boys
from the well-heeled classes of Bengal displayed in their writings on Gandhi,
Netaji and Nehru.
Meanwhile, black-and-white newsreels now the
property of Films Division, told the story how their less privileged peers
braved police lathis and bullets on the streets of Calcutta. What was most
shameful was that the British used well-educated Indians (more forebears)
to crush the freedom movement.
Today, the scene isn't dramatically different.
The Marxists have been in power for so long in Bengal, that the descendants
of those Xaverians and Martinians have learnt to do business with them. A
strange comfort level has been struck between the avowed party of the have-nots
and the five-meals-a-day society. The only difference between then and now
is that the Marxists have broadened the dialogue by including the lower rungs
of society. That's the only socialism they have achieved. Roped in anybody
interested in making quick money through dubious means or intimidation.
In Dum Dum, I find so many people having accumulated
ill-gotten funds through land promotion or servicing the burgeoning building
industry that it's a wonder to me how my boys, the poor Trinamool supporters,
kept out of it. I asked this question to Ranju, who clings on to my arm whenever
I am in North Dum Dum. He's a poor boy of about 30, no regular job except
prompting yatra (folk drama) actors and always dressed in shirts and trousers
which seem to have been dragged out of the neck of a bottle.
I know - and now the world knows - what a
deadly business it is to oppose the Marxists in West Bengal. In 29 years,
says Manas Ranjan Bhunia, the general secretary of the Congress, a party that
takes the Marxists' support for sustenance in Delhi, more than 20,000 people
have been killed or maimed by the CPI(M).
"Why do you go on working for the Trinamool?
Don't you know the dangers? I know. But each time I suffer a rigged election
or a violence, my resolve to drive these people out only grows. "But
isn't it an impossible dream? You guys don't have a chance. The police and
the entire administration is with them."
At the back of my mind, the memory of my encounters
with the families of many of the victims of Communist, state-backed terror
whom I had interviewed for my recent book, Bengal's Night Without End (India
First Foundation, 2006) played out. In one case, a widow recounted how she
watched the police burn her husband's body and tell her that it was only a
dog.
"No, we want to beat them in an election,"
Ranju said with a serious look.
Two systems. One, Stalinism which thrives
on intimidation and deceit. Another, Gandhian pacifism. Can one society accommodate
both at the same time? Hardly. With the passing of the years, its becoming
harder and harder to attract boys to the Trinamool fold. Defeats in successive
elections, for the time span of a generation, has withered away the Bengali
resolve to resist. What came to Bengal's rescue last time round was a big
national freedom movement. This time, before the Election Commission's BL
Tandon took up the challenge, there was only apathy.
I know Ranju is terribly poor. Yet he says
he shunned many offers from the CPI(M) to join them and get rich. "Many
of my friends started as flag carriers for them. Now they get around in Maruti
cars promoting buildings all over Dum Dum."
"Didn't your parents prevent you from
joining this party and resist them?"
"No. They are proud of me. Even if we
are to eat salt and bread we will not give up our fight against this evil
force," he said.
One day, Ranju will be a big leader. He will
wear starched dhotis and hold forth on ideals. But will people ever care to
find out how he struggled?
