Celebrating Wrath and Death

Daily struggle

Sunderbans- if you google it, you will come across the words like mangrove and largest delta. These words however, hardly captures the essence of the place. Sunderban is 45 kms from Kolkata and in just 2 hours you can reach the outskirts. You will be greeted by people who look quite similar to you and me- wearing Bata sandals, jeans, salwar kameezes and going about their way of life. If you ask, they will tell you which shop sells authentic wild honey; which shop to go to for the Gur Patali. A wide bridge now connects the islands with Kolkata and you are happy still to be part of civilization. Mobile tower is there for you to stay connected. You will be told by the tour operators to wake up early; hot water will be given for your morning chores and then you can set off for a visit to the forest on a launch. Everything is as it should be. It is winter, as you can see, best time to visit Sunderban.

Hope of surviving

 When you are happily ensconced in the warmth of the morning tea and bath, women are already out and knee deep in the icy waters of the backwaters or the “Khari”. They will stay there till the sun is up and it gets little warm. Their feet is turned white for staying so long in the saline water everyday- they are collecting the meen- baby prawns. For every bucket they will get only 25 rupees. If they try to cheat, their contract will be taken away by the Bheri wallahs. Most men by now are far away from the shores catching fish. They have to come back and sell their produce at the whole sale market by 12 so that they reach Kolkata markets by evening so that you and I can buy them on the way returning from our offices.

Boards have been put up at many parts of the forest- It is now illegal to collect honey or timber from these areas. The government is taking all measures to protect the national animal. You will be entertained by the stories of women who have survived an attack by the tiger- how only with a sickle they fought back and took out an eye or a paw off from the tiger. How a tiger can cross a mouth of seven rivers locally called “Saptamukhi” and take away cattle. How a tiger tracks the honey collectors for several kilometeres to target the weakest among the men and wait for the opportunity to pounce on him.

In the meantime unknown to you, people are struggling to raise even one crop of paddy. Post Aila half of the soil has become saline. So the yield is low and unlike other areas where flood is a harbinger of productivity, here people have started to dread the floods as more flood mean more salinity. The fresh water ponds used to raise the fish have been destroyed by Aila so that livelihood is also snatched away.

It comes to you as a very exotic tribal ritual when the front of the launch is painted red and a few flowers and agarbatti offered everyday by the head “Majhi”. You take photos of this ritual to show how you have been part of this exotic ritual.. maybe even recite the “Bonbibipaaala” in your drawing room next Saturday.

However, if you can take one step back in time, you will see how relevant this legend still is. How and why it is an enduring tale still recited by the people of Sunderbans- How they relate to “Dukhi” – the epitome of sorrow and how miraculously he is saved by Bonbibi. You will see that people of sunderban need to believe in this story, more now than ever before because they all wish the same- survive in the face of fierce wrath of nature compounded by power hungry bureaucrats and “shohure- babu”- those city people who draw up the policies without visiting them even once.

Here is a glimpse of that play. One of the Majhis in the play had been a school master. He lost his job when the school was destroyed by Aila. Then he was given the job of a tourist guide. He took up the job happily believing that now he would have some security. Unfortunately, the policy makers decided that such people deserve a blue uniform and an Identity card- that’s all. Whatever money they earn from the day is for theirs to keep but not to expect any allowance or pension- very magnanimous indeed- they gave him a job.

We are called for dinner by the tour operators. It is the last night in Sunderban. Tomorrow by evening I shall be home. The Paala wallahs are picking up their little props and costumes and putting it back in a large tin trunk. The care with which they fold each garment is the only testimony of their plight- that one trunk is their hope of survival- soon the tourist season will be over. However cold the nights are, however far they are from their homes, they will trudge on reciting their " Bonbibi Paala" for us..They will survive another year. Only Bonbibi knows what will happen next year... she will take care of them. If not, then also it would be according to what is written already - their fate.                       

Geography of the minds

Whenever there is a hint of terror in our great land- India, some historians and elite intellectuals start beating the drum of “Hindu-Muslim unity”. They trace back to Akbar’s marriage to Hindu princesses; the support and fight beside each other during the Great Mutiny and how Gandhi created a secular front in the largest political forum of pre-Independence- The Congress party. It is true that the common mass of India, its teeming millions in rural areas have lived in harmony with each other. However, if we look at even such minuscule societies with a magnifying glass, the harmony at best can be termed as cohabitation and amicable relationship. The Muslims of India have been, through the years, made to believe in a land- “ of milk and honey”, “of the most holiest of holy”- PAKISTAN.

Surprisingly, the land now so geographically entwined in the world map is less than 100 years old. There is no mention of Pakistan in any written religious or secular records. So the question arises- Where did this land originate? This brings me to an interesting concept- the geography of mind…or psychogeography.

 Psychogeography as defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals." Quoting Karl Marx, Debord further says- “People can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is animated.”

The term is relatively new and deals with a specific political and physical manifestation of post-colonial times.

The idea of a land is first implanted in the minds of people and it creates such powerful imagery that the idea endures for thousands and thousands of years until the political conditions favour towards making it into a reality.

4000 years ago, a book proclaimed- “To you I will give you Canaan, as the portion you will inherit” Psalm=105:7-Bible. With this began the pursuit of a nation to strive against all odds to create and cut out a physical reality out of a dream contained in a book- So powerful is the dream that at every Passover Seder, the Jewish diaspora ends the feast with the prayer- saying "Next Year in Jerusalem!" The birth of the nation state of Israel is a modern miracle. Never before or since there has been such a history where the people inherit a land after being banished from it for 4000 years. It is a miracle due to the tenacity of  a people to hold on to a dream in the face of  immense persecution through centuries- from the days of Moses to the First Crusade, then through the banishing of English Jews, to the days of Black death, and in recent times, the isolation of Jews in Russia. In this respect at least, Hitler had nothing new to offer. He just framed the old words of hatred in new literature and words and policies. Throughout this time, the nation was kept alive only in the words, religious practices and the customs…. Israel first resided in the minds of Jews long before there was any semblance of it on world map. Then in 1882, the first Jewish settlement was built in the land of “milk and honey”. On 14^th May, 1948, Israel became a land on the world map. It can be thus celebrated as the first successful project of Psychogeography.

There is another much closer instance of a land born from an image and an idea endured in the minds of the people.

“Our brave but voiceless nation is being sacrificed on the altar of Hindu Nationalism not only by the non-Muslims, but also, to their lasting shame, by our own so-called leaders with a reckless disregard of our protests and in utter contempt of the warnings of history.” So begins the pamphlet that has shaken the history of South Asia and still continues to play a vital role in world politics.

Choudhry Rahamat Ali was born in a Gujjar family in undivided India. In 1933, far away from the “voiceless nation” across kalapaani, he gave Indian Muslims a vision- a land most holy, carved out from the oppressed land that they were forced now to share with the Hindus. And he asked- “Are We to Live or Perish Forever?". 

Unlike the fate of God’s chosen people in Bible, however, Muslims of India already had a land to live in. So, the zeal and the seed of image of this land had to be powerful enough to want to find fault and hate for the physical reality of the land they were living in and henceforth covet the land of dream. To implement this, Rahamat Ali focused on the politics of the land and the freedom struggle. He gave the flesh and skin to this imagined land-

“Pakistan' is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asia homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks – the spiritually pure and clean.”

“They (the Muslim Delegates of the Round Table) have accepted, without any protest or demur and without any reservation or qualification, a constitution based on the principle of an All-India Federation. This acceptance amounts to nothing less than signing the death-warrant of Islam and of Muslims in India.” From then onwards, Indian freedom struggle had two characteristics- overthrow of the British Raj and to find a way around the “death warrant”. And on 14^th August, 1947, Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah successfully saw to this “unprecedented cyclonic revolution which has brought about the plan of creating and establishing two independent Sovereign Dominions in this sub-continent. As it is, it has been unprecedented; there is no parallel in the history of the world.”

The antiquity of Ramayana can be traced back to 4^th century BCE.  It is thus much older than the Bible. The story is well known not only in India but in the entire South Asian subcontinent. The benevolent prince going to exile with his wife and brother, the fighting with the demon king and the destruction of his land followed by the banishment of the wife and creating a just kingdom.

Even in this age of Agni missiles and Bluetooth, there are villages in India where the evening entertainment consists of the priest reciting from and explaining the various chapters of this epic to the masses. According to Hindu mythology, Rama is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, whose specific task was to kill the demon king Ravana and establish a kingdom where common people would be living happily ever after. Whether the common people really lived happily in these 11,000 years, there is not much evidence of. However, there are quite a few references as to the description of this rule or Rama Rajya- This was the time when people lived happily in harmony. There was absolute peace as every other king had accepted Rama as their sovereign ruler; there was no war or disease or hunger. Justice was true and dealt an honest deal. People, moreover, were wealthy and lived a holy, pious life emulating Rama.

Such is the power of this imagery of the Prince and his almost heaven like kingdom that it endured in one of the finest minds of our time.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born to the fourth wife of the Diwan of the small princely state of Porbunder in 1869. The family deity worshiped in this household was Rama. There was one Rama temple where little Gandhi used to visit with his mother. It was this petite, illiterate, nondescript woman who sowed the seed of nonviolence and endurance of the soul in Gandhi. As Prof. Ramachandra Guha says- “Mohandas’s mother introduced him to the mysteries- and beauties- of faith.” Gandhi believed in creating a nation out of India based on the highest standard that can be reached by any nation- a Rama Rajya where there would be no inequality of caste and wealth; where people would live in small self-sufficient units without coveting others’ land and people in perfect harmony with the natural flora and fauna. “My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic… There will be no castes such as we have today with their graded Untouchability….. Here there is perfect democracy based upon individual freedom.”

So strong was Gandhi’s belief in Rama, that he himself emulated Rama in several of his acts. On 2^nd March, 1930, Gandhi wrote to Viceroy Irwin about his plan for civil disobedience movement- “If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws.” This was exactly in accordance to what is written in the epic- that Rama released Lanka’s spies and even announced that he was going to attack Lanka the next morning.

In recent years, there has been a lot of controversy over the true meaning of Rama Rajya. Without arguing for or against any of those, it can be said that the idea of a peaceful, wealthy, happy and just nation is the Utopia that is appealing to a Muslim illiterate farmer and a Hindu college professor alike. So the idea of Rama Rajya lives on in the minds of the people. However, whether we can see a physical manifestation of such a land on the world map in future will depend largely on the way we wish to create it. The ability to create and understand abstract ideas is unique to us only. Hence our living space is both abstract and concrete. What we achieve is what we dream of first. Thus if ever we wish to see a Rama Rajya will depend on the path chosen to arrive at it- through violence and dogmatic persuasion or through acts of benevolence for greater good.