Tag: Gandhi

Review

Nazrul and His World View

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2024
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Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Author: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Translator: Radha Chakravarty

Publisher: Penguin Random House

The Bengali poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), is widely remembered as the fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy. The iconic bidrohi or ‘rebel poet’ of Bengal, Nazrul continues to be loved for his songs and poetry that were aimed at arousing the rebellious spirit of both Hindus and Muslims alike. But what of his prose, his journalism, and his politics? Selected Essays reveals to us the extraordinary versatility of Nazrul as a writer, thinker, and activist. Addressing subjects as diverse as social reform, politics, communal harmony, environmental concerns, education, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy, this rich collection showcases Nazrul’s dynamic vision and unique use of language as an instrument of change. The essays chart his evolving consciousness as a thinker, writer, and activist, offering vivid glimpses of the ethos of his times, his relationships with leading figures such as Tagore and Gandhi, and his active engagement with social, political, and cultural processes.

Of the forty-one essays selected here, (three undated), the first thirteen are all written in different places all in the year 1920. That was the year Nazrul returned to Bengal after serving in Karachi during World War I as a member of the Bengal regiment of the colonial British army. Reacting to the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre he writes, “May the Dyer monument never allow us to forget Dyer’s memory” because on that occasion Hindus and Muslims embraced each other and wept together as brothers. They shared the same agony as children of the same womb. In ‘Strike’, he praises the social awareness that has swept among the ranks of the labouring class and believes that the “protest is not just a rebellion, but the death-bite of the suffering, moribund class”. When some migrants were fired upon after a clash with the armed police at a place called Kanchagarhi, he asked in ‘Who is Responsible for the Killing of Migrants?’, whether anyone can ever tolerate such injustice towards humanity, conscience, self-respect and independence and states that they are no longer going to passively accept such assaults. ‘Awakening Our Neglected Power’ contends that democracy or people’s power cannot be established in our country because of the oppression inflicted by the Bhadra[1] community.

There are several essays in which Nazrul speaks about the state of National Education, he envisages ‘A National University’, and in a very powerful piece that he wrote from Presidency Jail in Kolkata on 7 January 1923, titled ‘Deposition of a Political Prisoner’ he reveals his self-confidence:

“If anything has struck me as unjust, I have described it as injustice, described oppression as oppression, named falsehoods as falsehood. …For that endless mockery, insults, humiliation and assaults have been rained on me, from within my home and beyond. But nothing whatsoever has intimidated me into dishonouring my own truth or my own Lord. No temptation has overpowered me enough to compromise my integrity or to diminish the immense self-satisfaction gleaned through my own endeavours…. I repeat, I have no fear, no sorrow. I am the child of the elixir of immortality.”

Nazrul grew up in a traditional religious environment, yet in his writings he drew upon both Hindu and Islamic sources, and expressed a faith that transcended the limits of any single religion. In several essays, he harps on the problems of Hindu-Muslim amity and enmity and warns us about “this hideous business of purity of touch and untouchability”. He wants only humans to live in India as brothers and wants everyone to be wary of the terrible deceptions created by both the religions.

In the essay ‘Temple and Mosque‘, he states that both parties have the same leader, and his real name is Shaitan, the Devil. Written in response to the communal riots that broke out in Kolkata on 2 April 1926, he feels that those very same places of worship that ought to have been bridges between heaven and earth are instead causing harm to humanity today, and so those temples and mosques should be broken down. In another essay titled ‘Hindu-Muslim’, penned the same year, Nazrul talks about the question of an internal tail in human beings. He says, “There’s no telling what animal excitement lured the human mind to discover a substitute for tails in the beard or tiki[2]!” He further elaborates:

“Both Hindu and Muslim ways of life can be tolerated, but their faith in tikitwa and daritwa, the orthodox ways of tiki and beard, is not to be borne, for both instigate violence and killing. Tikitwa is not Hindutwa, it is perhaps punditwa, the way of the pundit! Likewise, the beard, too, is not Islamic, it is mullatwa, the way of the mullah. These two types of hair tufts, marked with religious dogma, are precisely the reason for all the conflict and hair-splitting we witness today!”

Though it is not possible to discuss all the different editorials, book reviews, and political pieces that are included in this collection, one must mention at least two essays that speak about literary issues as well. In 1932, Nazrul wrote for Patrika (subsequently reprinted in Bulbul the following year), an interesting piece titled ‘World Literature Today’. In it he states that there are two kinds of writers present in the world today and their different tendencies have assumed immense proportions.

“Ranged on both sides are great war heroes, champion charioteers of the battlefield. On one side are the dreamers, such as Noguchi, Yeats and Rabindranath, and on the other, Gorky, Johan Bojer, Bernard Shaw, Benavente and their ilk.”

But Nazrul’s ire in being ostracized comes out clearly in ‘A Great Man’s Love Is a Sandbank’ (1927), where he criticises the high-handedness of Rabindranath Tagore. He begins by telling us how he was a prisoner of state at the Alipore Central Jail when he was informed by the assistant jailor that Tagore had recognised Nazrul’s talent and dedicated his play Basanta to him. The other political prisoners present there had laughed at him not in joy but in incredulity. For him, the blessing turned into a curse. His very close friends and state prisoners also turned away from him. He realised what massive internal damage this outward gain had caused him. Busy with his political agenda, he didn’t have the time to sit and meditate as advised several times by Tagore. So Nazrul writes, “I find that the brighter my countenance shines in this glory, the darker some other famous poets’ faces seem to appear.” He mentions that he had grown accustomed to police torture but when literary personages begin to torment one, their brutality knows no bounds. “Alas, O youthful new literature!” His crime was that young people celebrated his work. He laments further,

“That Kabiguru[3], revered by both parties like the grandsire Bhisma, should assent to this plot of killing Abhimanyu, is the greatest sorrow of our times. …As for me, I have discarded that topi–pyjama—sherwani–beard look[4], only out of fear of being mocked as a ‘Mia Saheb’. But still there is no respite for me…. Now we get the feeling that the Rabindranath of today is not the same Rabindranath we have always known.”

That the trajectories and beliefs of Tagore and Nazrul went in the opposite direction is well- known. In the essay, Nazrul then further continues his complaints against Tagore. He questions whether they have been considered as his enemies, simply because they didn’t go to him frequently. Also, since the goddess of wealth blessed him, Kabiguru did not know what dire poverty the new writers had to struggle against, languishing in conditions of starvation or semi-starvation. So, he humbly requests Kabiguru not to sprinkle salt on their wounds by mocking the impoverishment that is their singular affliction, for that is one form of heartlessness that they cannot tolerate.

Of the last three essays written in 1960, namely, ‘The Science of Life’(where men “are surrounded by all sorts of travails and sufferings, and many of them cannot be alleviated”), ‘A Point to Ponder’(where the nation faces an immense problem regarding the dispute about the instructions and procedure for the worship of the mother, the Bharatmata, our Mother India) and in ‘What We Need Today’, Nazrul speaks of the necessity of a “vast tumult in India”. Making his readers aware of the vast duplicity and trickery in the name of religion, he warns that unless one avoids the baseness of being subjugated by an external power, there is no prospect of heaven for us, only the grotesqueness of hell. He wants the kalboishakhi, the wild summer storm, to “approach in all its fury, rearing his head like a hooded serpent swimming in the unchecked torrents of an ocean of blood” and sweep everything away.

Before concluding one should also make a few comments on the translation. As a veteran translator, Radha Chakravarty, has successfully managed to transcreate some very difficult Bengali idioms, cultural nuances and analogies that Nazrul used in some of his essays. As she admitted in the Introduction, “[T]ranslating Nazrul’s prose proved to be a challenge, as demanding as it was exhilarating. …The endeavour demanded experiment and creativity rather than mechanical lexical ability and involved some difficult choices…Literal translation has been avoided, with greater focus on the sense, emotion, intellectual import, rhetorical features and stylistic particularities of the Bengali source texts.” She further adds that the present translations stemmed from a desire to bring Nazrul’s essays to a contemporary audience in South Asia and the rest of the world, to draw attention to his literary achievement as well as his significance as a writer, thinker, activist, and visionary. Though a lot of research and translation projects on Nazrul has been going on in Bangladesh for quite some time (where he holds the status of National Poet), in India, especially in West Bengal, the response is still rather lukewarm. Hence this volume is strongly recommended as a collector’s item.

[1] Literally decent but here indicates the bourgeoisie.

[2] A tuft of hair at the back of a tonsured head

[3] Tagore

[4] Cap-pyajama-longcoat – these with a beard were associated with the genteel muslim look – the look of the Mia Saheb

CLICK HERE TO READ THE EXCERPT

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Review

Voices from Beyond

Book Review by Swagata Chatterjee

Title: Ekalavya Speaks

Author: Sanjukta Dasgupta

Publisher: Penprints

Poetry which goes beyond the boundaries of words and speaks for a greater cause calls for a captivating read. The lines become more significant when the verses address multiple socio-politico-cultural issues, aesthetically and without didacticism. Poet and academician Sanjukta Dasgupta’s latest book of poems Ekalavya Speaks is not merely a gathering of words, they rather, “[…] spread out their wings untiring/ And never rest in their flight” (Yeats) and attempt to hark at deaf ears and represent unheard voices. She is a strong voice for the otherized, marginalised sections raising issues from multiple spheres of life. Caste, gender, myth, history, pre-history, and technology all find space in her chosen selection of poems. The very last lines of the first poem, ‘Accident of Birth’ says,

“No accident could be 
More catastrophic than
The accident of birth, alas.”

This sets the tone of the whole collection, bringing out the angst of not one voice or one poet but an entire nation. The poet is a strong voice, at times ironic as she says in her titular poem ‘Ekalavya Speaks’-

“The Sun also Rises for us
 I may claim your thumb some day.”

These lines are from Dronacharya, the tutor of the royal princes who asks his disciple to gift him his thumb after lopping it off as a fee to maintain his allegiance to the throne. Ekalavya, the tribal prince could not question the ‘guru’ in the Mahabharata, whereas the poet in the surreal space gives him the voice to speak for the treachery of the great guru. The guru reappears in the poem ‘Dronacharya: The Teacher of Princes’ where questions are thrown at the intentions of a biased guru who was “The glamourised bonded labour/ Leashed to the regal court.”

Her poem, ‘Kurukshetra-The Killing Field’, goes beyond the boundaries of territories and is akin to any war where lives are lost. At once Kurukshetra becomes the battleground of Ukraine or Gaza where humanity is killed every day. The crying mothers and wailing children are the same everywhere and they are representatives of the universal sorrow of pain and loss and how peace is a mere myth as “Peace was restored at the price/ of rivers of blood […]”. In fact, ‘In the Holy Land’, she talks of dying children and the toxic air of war-trodden Gaza; of the grief-ridden Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

In her greater narrative, Ekalavya and Karna unite to quest for justice, for a space in the mainstream, and for a better liberated world. In Dasgupta’s poetry, Ekalavya, Shambuka or Shikhandi are not figures from the great epics, they represent the backwards sections of society who perhaps after eons of silence they have now found the time to come out of death, saying– “ I rise from my ashes/ Resurrected!”

With Shikhandi, Draupadi’s brother in the Mahabharata, who was born a female and exchanged gender with a yaksha (nature spirit) for that of a male, Dasgupta brings in the suffering caused by gender identity. She sensitively writes about Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality in her poem ‘The Poet In Reading Gaol’. One’s sexual orientation can ironically be treated as a heinous crime. Heterogeny is also a kind of capitalism as the poet strongly urges and questions progressiveness and maligning of human rights.

In her earlier books Lakshmi Unbound, Sita’s Sisters, and Indomitable Draupadi. Dasgupta has primarily addressed the feminist question. Her latest includes poems like ‘Bapu’ and ’Manipur’. In ‘Bapu’, she talks about the rape of a 12-year-old child in the name of religion in India with sensitivity.

‘The Coffee Shop’ is an interesting and ironic poem. Dead leaders meet in a surreal space where neither murderer nor violence can touch them. They are ‘immortals’ and ‘martyrs’ and, now, are even invincible. It is utopian when Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther, and Julius Caesar meet each other. Religion and politics, peacemakers and warriors, all blend in a higher realm of understanding. The flavour of this poem is unique and different from the rest of the poems in the collection and yet thematically it stands out as a statement against violence and death. Death cannot bring an end to the ones whose deeds and ideals are immortal. The same can be said about another visionary poem, ‘Shakespeare and Kalidasa’.

In all the poems, the poet comes across as a strong, sensitive voice whose pen cuts across dogmas, blind faiths, violence and otherization. At the same time, she speaks for the cause of humanity. There are personal poems, like ‘I can’t breathe’; a brilliant poem describing psychological claustrophobia in a world where no peace or no prayers can end the suffering of souls. ‘The Exit’ or ‘Loss’ add richer gravity .

As a poet Dasgupta’s language is lucid and she draws her allusions and examples from the myths, from the past and the projected the future. She strongly voices her opinion. As an educator and as a responsible human being she becomes the voice of the many. Each poem unfolds a story to guides our way through obstructions, which are not physical but mental barriers from which one must liberate oneself. As I read her, I am reminded of a few lines by the great Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who wrote:

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

Swagata Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of English at a state-aided college under Vidyasagar University. She is an academician and a keen reader.

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A Special Tribute

Celebrating Gandhiism

We know him variously — a man whose face and form appear on currency notes in India and on stamps, as statues and as art, internationally. He was known as a pacifist, one who inspired the likes of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Obama and many more leaders. And yet, he was a tiny, frail man, rather adamant and uncomfortable to live with and with food choices that many might find difficult to digest. This man was called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Born on October 2nd 1869, in Porbandar, Gujarat, he became an internationally renowned figure for all of us. Like all great leaders, he impacted the world in ways more than one but he had some idiosyncrasies, for example, he had no faith on the film industry though a number of films have been made on and about him. Highlighting that is an essay from Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. Gandhi affected people and much of the writing in this edition goes to show how he or his ideas impacted them. Ratnottama Sengupta comments and translates parts of the episode from the biography of eminent Bengali writer, Nabendu Ghosh, her father, as well as a short story by him, to focus on Gandhi’s impact on India’s Direct Action Day (16th August 1946). A poem by contemporary Santosh Bakaya about the same incident make one wonder why suddenly there is so much focus on this part of history.

Here’s to unraveling the mystery and celebrating Gandhiism in spirit—

‘He Belongs to Me, He Belongs to You’: Santosh Bakaya weaves magic in poetry around the persona of Gandhi. Click here to read.

Gandhiji, a short story by Nabendu Ghosh, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Magic of the Mahatma , Ratnottama Sengupta shows the impact of Gandhi and his call for non-violence on Nabendu Ghosh as she continues to emote over his message of Ahimsa and call for peace amidst rioting. Click here to read.

Gandhi in Cinema Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri explores Gandhi in films and also his views on the celluloid screen. Click here to read.

Tags Gandhi, Gujarat, Martin Luther KIng Jr, Nabendu Ghosh, Nelson Mandela, Obama, Porbandar, Ratnottama Sengupta, Santosh Bakaya, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri

Tribute

‘He Belongs to Me, He Belongs to You’

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date October 2, 2023
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Santosh Bakaya weaves magic around the iconic Gandhi

MAGIC

Lo! I saw a magician last night.
A slender silhouette -- almost half-naked.
Was the night at its tricks once again?
Was the frail figure about to pull rabbits out of his hat?
Magicians do have this incorrigible habit of pulling rabbits from hats.
But this magician defied all stereotypes. Where was his hat?
Where the rabbits?

I looked at the calendar, and gasped. It was 16 August 1946.
How bizarre! The stars outside had a fickle glow.
There was chaos, there was confusion. There was hatred.
The graffiti on the mildewed walls screamed:
Direct Action Day!

Piercing the cacophony, a soft, feathery voice
fell on the turbulent crowd.
Not a rabble rousing voice, but a magical one.

“I have come here to serve Hindus and Muslims.”
A hush fell. Louder – louder – louder grew the hush.

Then I saw the half-naked figure walking away.

All alone – but in sync with 'Gurudeb's words
'Ekla chalo Re*’.

But lo and behold! There was more magic!
The pages of the calendar fluttered in the breeze.
With great ardour, swayed the trees.
I was amazed; the calendar now showed the year 2023.

I peeped through the window.
Birds perched on bowers were singing, impromptu songs.
The folds of their yellow-green-blue-wings hid musical notes.
Then I again saw the half-naked figure.
Walking alone, but in sync with 'Gurudeb's words,
'Ekla chalo Re,' ringing in his ears.

But lo and behold! There was more magic!
The One Man Army was no longer alone.
The trickle had become a deluge.
Music poured from every tree.

A multi-layered song was being sung in every tone,
every tenor, every pitch, pouring love melodies.
The sun of a new morn smiled from above.
The heady scent of freshly hewn lawn spread in the air.

Megalomaniacs had fallen pathetically silent.
The muted falling of a leaf creating a quiet turbulence.
An invisible drummer was beating his drum.

“Back to nature --Back to peace --Back to love.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth will make the whole world blind.

Blind-Blind-Blind.”
The surroundings resounded.
The boughs seemed to be swaying to the beat of myriad stringed instruments
Queedle queedle -queedle hoo- ah hoo- hoo- hoo kleek kik ik ik ik .honk honk
koo- ookoo hoooooooo…

Birds sang from every branch-- high pitch – low pitch, contralto cadences,
chirruping notes, and even hoarse, grating rattles and loud caws.
Magic again happened-- creating a soul-- soothing symphony
of eclectic pitches and rhythm.

“He belongs to me, he belongs to you.
He belongs to the man in the street.
He belongs to the coward and the bold.
He belongs to the strong and the effete.
He belongs to the one shivering on the pavement.
He belongs to me, he belongs to you.

"He belongs to the man whimpering under the awning.
Hoping for something good in the coming morning.
He belongs to the bruised and the battered.
And the one with unshed tears and clothes tattered.

"He belongs to the one who lives by his labour.
And even to the one who does not love his neighbor.
The spunky woman bending in ceaseless toil.
And the youngster whose blood is on the boil.

"He belongs to the one with the frown.
He belongs to the white, black and brown.
The one with a swagger in his gait.
The one who suffers viciously at the hands of fate.

"The bird fluttering helplessly in the cage.
The youth struggling with road rage.
Those engrossed in ego tussles
and the one flaunting his muscles.
He belongs to me, he belongs to you.”

With a revolutionary fervor, every leaf was shaking.
A symphony of love and peace was in the making.
The pilgrim was no longer alone
Love had injected every bone.
Faces glimmered with hope -- there was no mistaking.

*Gurudeb means Teacher and refers to Tagore in this case. 'Ekla Cholo Re' (Walk Alone) is a well known song by Tagore.

Santosh Bakaya, PhD, poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, TEDx speaker, has written twenty-three books across different genres, Ballad of Bapu, and Only in Darkness can you see the Stars [Biography of Martin Luther King Jr]. have won international acclaim. What is the Meter of the Dictionary? is her latest solo book of poetry.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Direct Action Day, Ekla Cholo Re, Gandhi, Hindus, Muslims, Santosh Bakaya, Tagore

Essay

Celebrating the novel… Where have all the Women Writers Gone?

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date September 14, 2023
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G Venkatesh writes about a book from 1946. What is interesting is no women writers are featured in it despite their being a phrase which he quotes in his essay, ‘a stepdaughter of the Muses’…

There is this book published in 1946 in New York, that I picked up at a Red Cross charity shop in Karlstad (Sweden) of late. A compilation of micro-biographies (make that ‘nano’ if you will) of 20 novelists (fiction-writers in other words) from Italy, Spain, France, England, Scotland, the USA, Russia and Ireland, who graced the world of literature in flesh between the mid-14^th and the mid-20^th centuries, and will continue to do so, in spirit, forever.

*_{Pillars of fertile imagination, seeded from the idea-realm}*
*Visual by* G Venkatesh

I venture in this article to present some gleanings from this little gem of a book, to enlighten, motivate, inspire, educate and rekindle interest in the classics of yore. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that all writing happens by the grace of God. We witness that in the lives of the twenty writers profiled in the book. Some had an inborn urge to write, some developed the penchant to do so as if the idea floated in from the idea-realm beyond the astral, and some others were blessed by the Divine to transmute their pain and suffering to the written word that has stood the test of time, and will continue to do so, into the distant future. Condemnation paved the way to commendation for some, while rejections emboldened others to transcend the limits of human judgement and rejoice in the sunshine of hard-earned glory.

At its perigee, the ‘novel’, as observed by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas, is an epitome of philosophy as applied to life. The Thomases ask readers to consider the life of every novelist profiled to be a magnum opus in itself – each adorned with facts stranger than fiction.

Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes

This is an Italian-French-Spanish trio (encompassing the 14^th to the early 17^th century), and perhaps most of the readers may be familiar only with the third-named. Giovanni Boccaccio was a contemporary of Alighieri Dante (whose biography he wrote). A ‘friendly sinner’, he was a devotee of the here and now, while also being profoundly interested in the hereafter.’ Novelists, well and truly, leave behind accounts of their times, couched in fiction (and that, read alongwith factual history, helps us readers to visualise and understand better how things were in the past). The ‘poets’ in them, simultaneously dwell on and dream about how things can, must and will be in the future. Many of them refrain from including a semi-autobiographical element to their novels, and the Thomases have identified Francois Rabelais as being one such. To the Frenchman, all life was an anecdote with a bitter ending, a truth he based his limited fictional creations on.

Miguel de Cervantes, the Spaniard, is presented as a disappointed, shattered and disgusted man, who was chiefly motivated by his own trials, travails and tribulations to pen the famous Don Quixote. This knight who fought windmills, was perhaps what Cervantes thought himself to be – blessed with the good fortune to live in folly and die in wisdom.

Defoe, Swift, Sterne

From the simple Quixote and the clumsy Sancho Panza to the resourceful Robinson Crusoe and his helpful Man Friday, characters created by Daniel Defoe in a novel eponymous with the protagonist. Defoe was a paradox of moral integrity and material ambition (if you can visualise one such blend), who by virtue of the fact that he donned the mantles of businessman, pedlar, politician, pamphleteer and spy (not necessarily in that order) in his life, could interpret mankind expertly in his fiction. A kind of ‘been-there, seen-that, done-that, can-write-about-all-with-authority’. Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels fame, was gifted with a supreme intellect and a spiritual-religious leaning, but encumbered by physical weakness. God gives but also deprives at the same time, a mystery which humankind has not been able to solve. Fatherless when barely half-a-year old, he was verily a titan (like the character Gulliver he created) among pygmies (like the Lilliputians). He abhorred injustice and thought and prayed forever for the felicity of humankind. He lived to be 78, but contended on the basis of his experiences that the gift of a long life is bought at a very high price.

Laurence Sterne, the preacher-poet Yorkshireman, left behind several nuggets of wisdom in his novels and a couple of them can be cited hereunder:

“I laugh till I cry, and I cry till I laugh” (reminding one of the Yin and the Yang which feed into each other)

“Give me all the blessings of wisdom and religion if you will, but above all, let me be a man.”

Scott, Balzac, Dumas

Sir Walter Scott, while being a prodigy like Swift, also had to contend with physical disabilities like him. He tided over them marvellously, prudently, gallantly and tirelessly, en route to a knighthood and immortality in the realm of English literature. Dreamy Honoré de Balzac, obdurate and uncompromising, believed that man’s destiny and purpose in life was to “rise from action through abstraction to sight” – a deed-word-thought ascent in other words. “Life lies within us (spiritual), and not without us (material)”, he averred. He never got the glory he deserved when he was alive, and his soul perhaps got the peace it richly merited when fame showed up posthumously.

Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan – characters from The Three Musketeers, a novel by Alexandre Dumas which presents the facts of 19^th century France through the medium of fiction – were known to school-goers in the 1970s and 1980s, like yours sincerely. Dumas, as the Thomases have noted, met praise with a shrug and insults with a smile – stoically in other words. However, he had a penchant for sarcasm and trenchant wit which were unleashed whenever required. “I do not know how I produce my poems. Ask a plum tree how it produces plums,” is verily a testimony to his transatlantic contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “All writing happens by the grace of God.”

Hugo, Flaubert, Hawthorne

Two Frenchman and a New-Englander American comprise this trio. Viktor Marie Hugo, of Les Misérables fame, was born in the same year as Dumas, and was regarded widely as the ‘Head’ of the 19^th century to Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Heart’. His crests of hard-won success coincided with the troughs of ill-deserved sorrow (he had to contend with the deaths of his wife and children). The Divine Will strengthened his mind, soul and fingers to move quill on paper, enabling the much-bereaved Frenchman to cope and conquer. “Sorrow,” he wrote, “is but a prelude to joy.” A stoic would however add, “and vice versa”. Quite like Sterne’s “I laugh till I cry, and I cry till I laugh”. Despite all that he had to endure; Hugo always believed in God and the purposes he lays out for human beings in their lives.

Hugo’s friend Gustave Flaubert considered the written word to be a living entity, with a voice, perfume, personality and soul. A concoction of realism and romanticism, if ever there was one, Flaubert was also a peculiar amalgamation of poet-cynic, artist-scientist and humankind’s comforter-despiser. He ardently believed that though the soul is trapped within a mortal corpus on the terrestrial realm, it (which is the actual identity of a human being) lives in the idea-realm, and finds its rewards therein.

Hawthorne, on the other side of the ocean, was charmed by the sea and surf and sand in his childhood and youth, having spent a lot of time along the New England coast in north-western America. That led him to dwell on the mysteries of the human soul (which continue to be mysteries at the time of writing), while rebelling against the Puritanic influences that had engulfed the region. He was on an eternal quest, an intellectual and moral pathfinder in his own right, and a pioneering rebel with the pen and quill in his arsenal.

Thackeray, Dickens, Dostoyevsky

William Makepeace Thackeray, readers will be interested to know, was born in Calcutta (now, Kolkata). A sentimental cynic who glimpsed the stupidity of life through the fog of sorrow, he believed that foolishness of the past is a pre-requisite to wisdom in the present and the future – in other words, simply put, we learn from our errors as we move on. ‘Gifted with a bright wit and an attractive humour’, in the words of Charlotte Bronte, he contended that literature was more a misfortune and less a profession. His cynicism helped him to grasp reality, and feel empowered in the process –“How very weak the very wise; how very small the truly great are.” Kind and wise humans often lack the power to change things for the better, while the powerful ones lack the conscience, will and goodness to want to do so.

Thackeray rivalled with Charles Dickens for fame and glory. Dickens, similar to Scott and Swift, had to contend with physical discomfort in his childhood and adolescence, in addition to a father who was not responsible with the money he earned. These experiences would later feed into the stories he churned out prolifically; semi-autobiographical some of them, while informing readers at the same time about the times that prevailed – “the best of times and the worst of times” (A Tale of Two Cities). His humble beginnings made him burn the midnight oil later in life, fuelled by the ambition to succeed, which he sustained all along. Quite like it was Hugo across the Channel, the troughs of torment annulled the acmes of accomplishment. Yet, he remained grateful to God and fellow-humans for the life he lived, and bade one and all a ‘respectful and affectionate farewell’, before ascending to the astral realm.

Reclusive Feodor Dostoyevsky, like Hawthorne in America, struggled to shake off a Puritan upbringing and sought fodder for his literature among the common man – the suffering proletariat who visited liquor shops to drown their sorrows in alcohol. Man, he believed, was responsible for his own salvation…and not God. He however did believe at times that God saved those whom men punished. But then, he also contradicted himself or seemed to do so, when he said that man is saved only because the Devil exists. But perhaps that was not a contradiction after all – God saves man from what he has to be saved from! The meaning of life, according to Dostoyevsky, was the brute-to-angel and the sinner-to-saint transformation of man; quite on the lines of Balzac’s action-abstraction-sight prescription.

Novelist	Lifespan	Selected works
Giovanni Boccaccio	1313-1375	Filocolo, Filostrato, Teseide, Fiammetta, Amorosa Visione, Ameto, Decameron, Life of Dante
Francois Rabelais	1495 – 1553	Pantagruel, Gargantua
Miguel de Cervantes	1547 – 1616	Galatea, Don Quixote, Novelas Exemplares, Persiles y Sigismunda
Daniel Defoe	1661-1731	The True-Born Englishman, The Apparition of Mrs Veal, Robinson Crusoe, The Dumb Philosopher, Serious Reflections, Moll Flanders
Jonathan Swift	1667 – 1745	The Battle of the Books, The Tale of a Tub, Gulliver’s Travels Children of the Poor, Directions to Servants, Polite Conversation
Laurence Sterne	1713-1768	A political romance, Tristram Shandy, Sermons by Yorick, The Sentimental Journey
Sir Walter Scott	1771 – 1832	The Lady of the Last Minstrel, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Monastery
Honoré de Balzac	1799 – 1850	The Country Doctor, Eugenie Grandet, Jesus in Flanders, Droll Stories, Louis Lambert, Seraphita, A Daughter of Eve, The Peasants
Alexandre Dumas	1802 – 1870	The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Black Tulip, The Prussian Terror, The Forty-Five, Chicot the Jester, The Queen Margot
Victor Hugo	1802 – 1885	Les Misérables, The Toilers of the Sea, The History of a Crime, Legend of the Centuries, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Supreme Pity
Gustave Flaubert	1821 – 1880	Madame Bovary, The Sentimental Education, The Temptation of St Anthony, Bouvard and Pécuchet, Salambbô
Nathaniel Hawthorne	1804 – 1864	Twice Told Tales, The Blithedale Romance, The Scarlet Letter, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Marble Faun, Tanglewood Tales, The Snow Image
William Thackeray	1811 – 1863	The Great Hoggarty Diamond, Vanity Fair, The Book of Snobs, Henry Esmond, The Virginian, Lovel the Widower, The Newcomes
Charles Dickens	1812 – 1870	Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations
Feodor Dostoyevsky	1821 – 1881	Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, The Double, The Landlady, The Family Friend, The House of Death, The Gambler, The Idiot,
Leo Tolstoy	1828 – 1910	War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Childhood, The Cossacks, Two Hussars, Three Deaths, A Confession, Master and Man, Resurrection, What is Art
Guy de Maupassant	1850 – 1893	Une Vie, The Ball of Fat, Mademoiselle Fifi, The Necklace, Yvette, Our Heart, Bel-Ami, Pierre and Jean, A Piece of String
Emile Zola	1840 – 1902	Doctor Pascal, Therese Raquin, The Dram Shop, Nana, Germinal, The Earth. The Dream, Rome, Paris, Fertility, Work, Truth, Justice
Mark Twain	1835 – 1910	Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Joan of Arc, A Connecticut Yankee, What is Man, The Prince and the Pauper
Thomas Hardy	1840 – 1928	A Pair of Blue Eyes, Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Trumpet-Major, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Table: The novelists profiled, and a list of their selected works

Tolstoy, Maupassant, Zola

Leo Tolstoy, also a Russian like Dostoyevsky, unlike Dickens, was not guided onward and forward by ambition. He believed in stooping to conquer and was motivated in his life’s journey by compassion. Orphaned when not yet a teenager, haunted by an inferiority complex pertaining to his ‘unprepossessing appearance’, and disgusted with organised religion (the Orthodoxy which prevailed in Russia), he discovered his purpose in Rousseau’s philosophy and in ridding the human heart of evil and helping it to live in peace, in communion with Nature. His dissent, rebellion and dissatisfaction with extravagance (of the nobility), bigotry (of the clergy) and tyranny (of the royalty), were the seeds, water and fertiliser for his contributions to Russian literature. Readers know that Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by the philosopher-prophet-penman Leo Tolstoy to set up the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa. Some nuggets which will serve as parts of vade mecums for readers:

“Death, blessed brother death, you are the final deliverance.”

“There are millions of human beings on earth who are suffering. Why do you think only of me?”

Guy de Maupassant was one of those millions who suffered a lot. Reading about the tragic short life led by him, with constant physical and psychological afflictions which led to autoscopy in his 42^nd year, and death in the 43^rd, makes one sad. It also makes readers turn to his short stories – of which he is known to be a master – more eagerly. Flaubert and de Maupassant knew each other well, the former being a ‘guru’ guiding the latter on from time to time, along his literary journey.

Another Frenchman – Emile Zola – a contemporary of de Maupassant and Flaubert and a good friend of the painter Paul Cezanne, progressed through pitfalls and serendipitous godsends to profile the poor people of France, and ironically rise to richness thereby. A man who defended justice and spoke up against all forms of unfairness, Zola is known for standing up for the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew who was wrongly (and knowingly so) accused of treason in 1894, and playing a key role in clearing the Jew’s name in 1906 (four years after Zola passed away). His last written words –“…to remake through truth a higher and happier humanity.”

Twain and Hardy

The man most readers know as Mark Twain, was born Samuel Clemens in America. Though it would not be right to compare and contrast the travails endured by the novelists profiled by Henry and Dana in this book, it can at least be said that a peep into Twain’s life tugs at your heartstrings and the vibrations linger on for a long time. Indeed, as a natural consequence, respect and admiration well up in the heart, for this novelist. He suffered an awful lot, but also learnt to laugh at his own agony as an ‘onlooker’ – the soul observing the pain of the body and the trauma of the mind it enlivens, from a distance, without being affected in any way. Like Hugo on the other side of the ocean, he endured what can be considered as possibly the greatest sorrow a man can face – burying/cremating his own children, one after another. Twain always supported the underdogs while voicing his disgust at the pompousness of the rich and powerful, in his own unique brand of sarcasm. The following words of his may sound cynical, but they are open to interpretation:

“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a homeless, vagrant, useless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty centuries.”

Without letting these words deter you, link them with the other sufferer Viktor Hugo’s “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”, and soldier on.

The last of the twenty, Thomas Hardy, is yours sincerely’s favourite (I happen to read all his important works in my twenties, if I remember right). Hardy like his fellow-Britons Swift and Scott was born with a “frail body, strong mind and compassionate soul”. He was compassionate towards and appreciative of the forces and elements of Mother Nature – winds, clouds, bees, butterflies, squirrels, sheep etc., as pointed out by the Thomases. The manner in which he moulded his protagonists in his novels was catalysed by this compassion. Most of them are compassionate themselves, and evoke compassion in the hearts of readers, quite easily. Hardy wanted to teach his fellow-humans how to “breast the misery they were born to”, by using his fictional protagonists as instruments. His life was an exercise in “subduing the hardest fate” and “persistence through repeated discomfitures”. As it often happens with true geniuses, he was much ahead of his times, and the glory that illumined his soul in heaven posthumously, more than compensated for the disappointments which had to be endured when it was encased in his mortal corpus.

Not the last word by any means

Serendipity, it must have been, which made me stride into the Red Cross charity shop in Karlstad in June, wherefrom I purchased this 280-page treasure. To quote Longfellow (who incidentally was a college-mate of Hawthorne’s),

“Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime/And departing leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time.”

The 20 authors profiled in this book represent a huge family of writers who converted fiction from ‘a stepdaughter of the Muses’ to an ‘epitome of the philosophy of life’, except that there were no ‘daughters or stepdaughters of men’ listed among the novelists in this volume.

G Venkatesh (50) is a Chennai-born, Mumbai-bred ‘global citizen’ who currently serves as Associate Professor at Karlstad University in Sweden. He has published 4 volumes of poetry and 4 e-textbooks, inter alia.

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Excerpt

Journey After Midnight

Title: Journey After Midnight: A Punjabi Life from Canada to India

Author: Ujjal Dosanjh

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

A variation on the common Indian expression “Mullan de daur maseet taeen,” which roughly translates as “An imam’s ultimate refuge is the mosque,” sums up my relationship with the world: India is my maseet. I have lived as a global citizen, but India has been my mandir, my masjid, and my girja: my temple, my mosque, and my church. It has been, too, my gurdwara, my synagogue, and my pagoda. Canada has helped shape me; India is in my soul. Canada has been my abode, providing me with physical comforts and the arena for being an active citizen. India has been my spiritual refuge and my sanctuary. Physically, and in the incessant wanderings of the mind, I have returned to it time and again.

Most immigrants do not admit to living this divided experience. Our lack of candour about our schizophrenic souls is rooted in our fear of being branded disloyal to our adopted lands. I believe Canada, however, is mature enough to withstand the acknowledgement of the duality of immigrant lives. It can only make for a healthier democracy.

Several decades ago, I adopted Gandhi’s creed of achieving change through non-violence as my own. As I ponder the journey ahead, far from India’s partition and the midnight of my birth, there is no avoiding that the world is full of violence. In many parts of the globe, people are being butchered in the name of religion, nationalism and ethnic differences. Whole populations are migrating to Europe for economic reasons or to save themselves from being shot, beheaded or raped in the numerous conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. The reception in Europe for those fleeing mayhem and murder is at times ugly, as is the brutal discrimination faced by the world’s Roma populations. The U.S. faces a similar crisis with migrants from Mexico and other parts of South America fleeing poverty and violence, in some cases that of the drug cartels. Parents and children take the huge risk of being killed en route to their dreamed destinations because they know the deathly dangers of staying. Building walls around rich and peaceful countries won’t keep desperate people away. The only lasting solution is to build a peaceful world.

Human beings are naturally protective of the peace and prosperity within their own countries. A very small number of immigrants and refugees, or their sons and daughters, sometimes threaten the peace of their “host” societies. But regardless of whether the affluent societies of western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America like it or not, the pressure to accept the millions of people on the move will only mount as the bloody conflicts continue. Refugees will rightly argue that if the West becomes involved to the extent of bombing groups like ISIS, it must also do much more on the humanitarian front by helping to resettle those forced to flee, be they poverty-driven or refugees under the Geneva Convention. With the pressures of population, poverty and violence compounded by looming environmental catastrophes, the traditional borders of nation states are bound to crumble. If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.

In my birthplace, the land of the Mahatma, the forces of the religious right are ascendant, wreaking havoc on the foundational secularism of India’s independence movement. I have never professed religion to be my business except when it invades secular spaces established for the benefit of all. Extremists the world over—the enemies of freedom—would like to erase both the modern and the secular from our lives. Born and bred in secular India, and having lived in secular Britain and Canada, I cherish everyone’s freedom to be what they want to be and to believe what they choose to believe.

I have always been concerned about the ubiquitous financial, moral and ethical corruption in India, and my concern has often landed me in trouble with the rulers there. Corruption’s almost complete stranglehold threatens the future of the country while the ruling elite remain in deep slumber, pretending that the trickle of economic development that escapes corruption’s clutches will make the country great. It will not.

Just as more education in India has not meant less corruption, more economic development won’t result in greater honesty and integrity unless India experiences a cultural revolution of values and ethics. The inequalities of caste, poverty and gender also continue to bedevil India. Two books published in 1990, V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Million Mutinies Now and Arthur Bonner’s Averting the Apocalypse, sum up the ongoing turmoil. A million mutinies, both noble and evil, are boiling in India’s bosom. Unless corruption is confronted, evil tamed, and the yearning for good liberated, an apocalypse will be impossible to avert. It will destroy India and its soul.

On the international level, the world today is missing big aspirational pushes and inspiring leaders. Perhaps I have been spoiled. During my childhood, I witnessed giants like Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew of the Indian freedom movement take their place in history and even met some of them. As a teenager, I was mesmerized by the likes of Nehru and John F. Kennedy. I closely followed Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy as they wrestled with difficult issues and transformative ideas. I landed in Canada during the time of Pierre Trudeau, one of our great prime ministers. Great leaders with great ideas are now sadly absent from the world stage.

The last few years have allowed me time for reflection. Writing this autobiography has served as a bridge between the life gone by and what lies ahead. Now that the often mundane demands of elected life no longer claim my energies, I am free to follow my heart. And in my continuing ambition that equality and social justice be realized, it is toward India, the land of my ancestors, that my heart leads me.

Extracted from the revised paperback edition of Journey After Midnight: A Punjabi Life from Canada to India by Ujjal Dosanjh. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.

About the Book: Born in rural Punjab just months before Indian independence, Ujjal Dosanjh emigrated to the UK, alone, when he was eighteen and spent four years making crayons and shunting trains while he attended night school. Four years later, he moved to Canada, where he worked in a sawmill, eventually earning a law degree, and committed himself to justice for immigrant women and men, farm workers and religious and racial minorities. In 2000, he became the first person of Indian origin to lead a government in the western world when he was elected Premier of British Columbia. Later, he was elected to the Canadian parliament.

Journey After Midnight is the compelling story of a life of rich and varied experience and rare conviction. With fascinating insight, Ujjal Dosanjh writes about life in rural Punjab in the 1950s and early ’60s; the Indian immigrant experience—from the late 19th century to the present day—in the UK and Canada; post-Independence politics in Punjab and the Punjabi diaspora— including the period of Sikh militancy—and the inner workings of the democratic process in Canada, one of the world’s more egalitarian nations.

He also writes with unusual candour about his dual identity as a first-generation immigrant. And he describes how he has felt compelled to campaign against discriminatory policies of his adopted country, even as he has opposed regressive and extremist tendencies within the Punjabi community. His outspoken views against the Khalistan movement in the 1980s led to death threats and a vicious physical assault, and he narrowly escaped becoming a victim of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Yet he has remained steadfast in his defence of democracy, human rights and good governance in the two countries that he calls home—Canada and India. His autobiography is an inspiring book for our times.

About the Author: Ujjal Dosanjh was born in the Jalandhar district of Punjab in 1946. He emigrated to the UK in 1964 and from there to Canada in 1968. He was Premier of British Columbia from 2000 to 2001 and a Liberal Party of Canada Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2011. In 2003 he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honour conferred by the Government of India on overseas Indians.

Click here to read the interview with Ujjal Dosanjh

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Bhaskar's Corner

Chittaranjan Das: A Centenary Tribute

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date August 14, 2023
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By Bhaskar Parichha

In the contemporary world, with its multiple environmental crises, conflicts, and violence, persisting poverty, and social exclusion, the question about the role of arts in general, and of literature specifically, must inevitably arise. Do they have any positive role other than entertainment and distraction, or are they merely the icing on a rapidly decaying and disintegrating cake?

Without naming the problem in exactly this way, much of Chittaranjan Das’s work was devoted to implicitly answering this question, for he clearly recognised that a merely functionalist approach to trying to identify the role of the arts in society would be totally inadequate and theoretically shallow. Rather, to answer the question more fully, we should ask what constitutes a society’s self-understanding, its modes of self-representation, and its internal hermeneutics, and how, methodologically speaking, we can gain access to this deep cultural grammar of a society. Das’s original professional career was as a rural sociologist and teacher of the subject in Agra and elsewhere. As a sociologist he would have been aware that such questions arise not only in the sociology of the arts, but equally in relation to such intractable subjects as religion, suicide, and the emotions.[1]

The year 2023 is the centennial birth anniversary[2] of the thinker, educationist, critic, pioneer of Odia non-fiction writing and one of the finest translators, Professor Chittaranjan Das. Chittabhai — as he was known throughout Odisha — was the most prolific writer, with numerous diaries, essays, reviews, autobiographies, memoirs, columns, textbooks, and monographs.

Many eminent writers were born in Bagalpur village in Jagatsinghpur district. Chittaranjan Das was one of them. He was the third child of five brothers and three sisters. He attended Punang School after schooling in his native village. Afterwards, he attended Ranihat Minor School and Ravenshaw Collegiate School. In 1941, he passed the matriculation examination and enrolled at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, for higher education. However, he became involved in the independence movement. His inspiration came from Manmohan Mishra [3].

During his Ravenshaw student days, he was an active member of the Communist Party of India. In 1942, he joined the Quit India Movement and was imprisoned. During his jail term, Das acquired many skills, including learning languages, particularly French. In 1945, he was released from prison and attended Santiniketan. During his academic career, he was exposed to a wide variety of intellectuals, thinkers, and writers. He was deeply influenced by their works.

His studies in psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology continued in Europe and abroad in the years that followed. He was trained in clinical psychology at the Vienna School established by Sigmund Freud. It was here that he met philosopher Martin Buber. He continued his studies at Santiniketan and later at Copenhagen University, Denmark.

He returned to Odisha in 1954 and joined the Jibana Bidyalaya, a school inspired by Gandhi’s ideals on education, established by Nabakrushna Choudhury and Malati Devi. Later on, he became the headmaster of this institution. He left after four years and took a teaching assignment near Agra.

Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy drew Das to the revered sage’s teachings. Upon returning to Odisha, he taught at the Institute of Integral Education in Bhubaneswar, based on Sri Aurobindo’s values. This was in 1973. While he did not stay for long, he remained associated with this movement until his death in 2011.

Das considered the whole world to be his home. He was proficient in a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Assamese, Sanskrit, Danish, Finnish, French, Spanish, and English. His vast studies covered many areas of social and human sciences like philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and linguistics as well as school studies. His knowledge is reflected in 250 books he wrote or translated into Odia.

He was a regular contributor to newspapers and his columns appeared in major Odia dailies like Dharitri, Pragativadi, Sambad, Samaja and more. These short pieces have been compiled into books that give insight into his views on contemporary issues. His first writing was an article in a school magazine. The article ‘Socrates’ appeared in 1937 in the Ravenshaw Collegiate magazine, Sikshabandhu.

Das travelled widely around the world. During his travels, he closely examined the social, cultural, and political life of the countries he visited. He wrote books describing his impressions. He has translated many books into Odia from countries he visited. His translation work is vast. His understanding of the topic and the translation of the books make for a pleasant reading experience.

He was an excellent diary writer. These captured his feelings about many incidents. The autobiographical diary entries have been published as Rohitara Daeri[4], a series of over 20 volumes. His love for the mother tongue was unparalleled. Despite excellent command of more than a dozen languages, including German, Danish and Finnish, as well as Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu and Bengali, he wrote mostly in his mother tongue, Odia.

His contribution to Odia literature was huge because he translated the works of many prominent writers — Bengali writer Ashapurna Devi, polymath Albert Schweitzer, French novelist François Mauriac, British-Indian anthropologist Verrier Elwin, Danish poet Karl Adolph Gjellerup, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, Russian poet Boris Pasternak, former President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and the iconic Mahatma Gandhi. Sri Aurobindo’s principal philosophic work, a theory of spiritual evolution culminating in the transformation of man from a mental into a supramental being and the advent of a divine life upon earth, Life Divine, is Chittranjan Das’s significant work.

Many awards have come his way. In 1960, for his essay ‘Jeevana Vidyalaya’[5], he was awarded by the Odisha Sahitya Akademi. He was given the Sarala Award in 1989 for his essay ‘Odisha O Odia’. He was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1998 for his book Biswaku Gabakhya [6]. He bagged more accolades from Prajatantra Prachar Samiti, Gangadhar Rath Foundation, Utkal Sahitya Samaj and Gokarnika.

Chittaranjan Das’s works incorporate both creative experimentation and a transformative philosophy. He has worked in education, literature, cultural creativity and artistic criticism. During his lifetime, he was instrumental in the growth and development of numerous social action and development groups. Throughout his writings, he discussed self-development, social change, and mankind’s evolution. His Odia autobiography Mitrasya Chakhusa [7]is an extraordinary work in the genre.

A scholar of eminence, literary commentator and author of numerous books in Odia and English, he was known as ‘Socrates of Odisha.’

[1] John Clammer (The Essays of Chittaranjan Das on Literature, Culture, and Society/Ed. Ananta Kumar Giri and Ivan Marquez)

[2] The Odia writer lived from 1923-2011.

[3] A revolutionary writer and poet who lived from 1917 to 2000.

[4] Rohit’s Diary

[5] School of life

[6] Window to the World

[7] Through the eyes of a Friend

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Review

A Journey, a Memoir and an Inspiration

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 15, 2023
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Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada

Author: Ujjal Dosanjh

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

The Punjabi Diaspora is a global phenomenon that has grown in size and complexity in recent years. It is estimated that there are around 20 million Punjabis living outside the Punjab region in India and Pakistan. This is stretching across multiple continents and countries. Punjabis have migrated to different parts of the world since the British Raj. However, this diaspora has become more visible in recent decades due to technology and global connectivity.

Highly diverse and dynamic, with different groups of Punjabis living in different places around the world. In North America, Punjabis are concentrated in the United States and Canada. In Europe they are mainly settled in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and France. In the Middle East, they are found in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. In South East Asia, they are mainly settled in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Punjabis have had a significant impact on the culture and economy of the countries where they have settled. Their positive contributions were felt in multiple industries, from agriculture to tech. They have been key to spurring economic growth in the areas where they have settled. They have also had a major influence on the culture and cuisine of these countries, with Punjabi food being a popular choice in many areas.

Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life : From India to Canada by Ujjal Dosanjh speaks about the Punjabi diaspora in all its splendor. Dosanjh was born in the Jalandhar district of Punjab in 1946. He emigrated to the UK in 1964 and from there to Canada in 1968. He was Premier of British Columbia from 2000 to 2001 and a Liberal Party of Canada Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2011, including a period as Minister of Health and Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism, Human Rights and Immigration. In 2003 he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honour conferred by the Government of India on overseas Indians.

The blurb contends: “Journey After Midnight is the compelling story of a life of rich and varied experience and rare conviction. With fascinating insight, Ujjal Dosanjh writes about life in rural Punjab in the 1950s and early ’60s; the Indian immigrant experience—from the late 19th century to the present day—in the UK and Canada; post-Independence politics in Punjab and the Punjabi diaspora— including the period of Sikh militancy—and the inner workings of the democratic process in Canada, one of the world’s more egalitarian nations.”

Dosanj states candidly: “Today’s world has few leaders brimming with great ideas. The paucity of great leaders afflicts India as well. There are no inspiring giants on the national stage tall enough to lead India out of the ethical and moral quagmire. Asked whether he was working to create a new India along with seeking its independence from Britain, Mahatma Gandhi had declared that he was trying to create a new Indian–an honest, fair and just Indian for a proud, progressive, prosperous and caring India. Since the Mahatma’s time the moral and ethical values of India have decayed. In Indian politics, civil service and public life, there is little evidence of the ideals he lived and died for.”

He continues: “A substantial portion of the Indian economy is underground; all due to the sadly enduring disease of corruption. The albatross of financial, ethical and moral corruption is strangulating and shortchanging the country. Those who say economic progress will by itself free India from corruption are just as wrong as those who in the 1950s maintained that education by itself would reduce corruption. It obviously hasn’t, and India finds itself counted among the most corrupt countries on earth. Corruption shatters human dreams and stunts ingenuity. It constrains personal and political liberties. It severely limits opportunities. The main hindrance in the path of social, political, economic and cultural progress is the disconnect between knowing what is right and doing the right thing; most know what is the right and the ethical thing to do, but they continue to do the wrong and the unethical thing; hence the ubiquitous corruption.”

Calling upon the Indians for a moral revolution Dosanj writes: “The sculpting of Gandhi’s Indians, and the building of the India of the dreams of its founding fathers and mothers, requires a moral and ethical revolution-a revolution of values that are of Indians, by Indians and for Indians. No matter how bleak the political and ethical scene today, I’m certain there are great minds fearless, humane and brave among the billion plus residents of India. We may not see
them, but they exist. We may not know them, but they are among us. They must heed India’s call. They must come forward and lead. India’s destiny demands it.”

In the ‘Afterword’ he laments about the state of affairs of Punjab in recent times: “Punjab is staring at the prospect of turmoil, radicalization and violent fundamentalism, and yet many in the government and otherwise seem obsessed with presenting and treating the likes of the late singer Moosewala as modern Punjab’s heroes. That the young singer’s life was cut short by gangsters’ guns was horrible and must be condemned. Beyond that the AAP and others must be careful not to glorify violence. Unfortunately, almost the whole of Punjab seems taken with Moosewala; the young man was a talented singer but much of his poetry and music was about guns and aggressive machismo. Is that what Punjab needs and must idolize?”

Dosanjh writes candidly about his dual identity as a first-generation immigrant. And he describes how he has felt compelled to campaign against the discriminatory policies of his adopted country. He opposes regressive and extremist tendencies within the Punjabi community. His outspoken views against the Khalistan movement in the 1980s led to death threats and vicious physical assaults, and he narrowly escaped the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Yet he has remained steadfast in his defence of democracy, human rights and effective governance in the two countries he calls home—Canada and India.

The writing style is fluid and languid. This is not a book that can be judged on the basis of its literary merit. It isn’t just a simple memoir, but rather a record of a turbulent period in India’s history. It is a book that represents a lifetime journey, crossing oceans and cultures. As a memoir, Ujjal Dosanjh’s book is at once personal and political, but most importantly, it is inspiring.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Air India, Bhaskar Pariccha, British Columbia, Canada, Gandhi, Human Rights and Immigration, Journey After Midnight - A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, Khalistan, Liberal Party of Canada, Minister of Health, Moosewala, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, Premier, Sikh militancy, Speaking Tiger Books, U K, Ujjal Dosanjh

Contents

Borderless, April 2023

Editorial

Can Love Change the World?… Click here to read.

Conversation

Keith Lyons interviews Asian Australian poet Adam Aitken about cross-cultural identity, and the challenges of travel, writing, and belonging. Click here to read.

Translations

Gandhiji, a short story by Nabendu Ghosh, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Khaira, the Blind, a story by Nadir Ali, has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.

Clothes of Spirits, a folktale, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Many Splendored Love, four poems by Masud Khan, have been translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Birds are Alive, has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Nobo Borshe or on New Year, Tagore’s poem on the Bengali New Year, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty for the occasion this April. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael R Burch, Vipanjeet Kaur, William Miller, Sutputra Radheye, Jim Landwehr, Namrata Varadharajan, Phil Wood, Akshada Shrotryia, Richard Stevenson, Abdul Jamil Urfi, Scott Thomas Outlar, Anasuya Bhar, George Freek, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In My Love for RK Narayan, Rhys Hughes discusses the novels by ths legendary writer from India. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Magic of the Mahatma & Nabendu

Ratnottama Sengupta shows the impact of Gandhi and his call for non-violence on Nabendu Ghosh as she continues to emote over his message of Ahimsa and call for peace amidst rioting. Click here to read.

Kindred Spirits

Anjali V Raj writes of an endearing friendship. Click here to read.

Colorado comes to Eden

Meredith Stephens sails to meet more people in Eden. Click here to read.

Us vs Them

Shivani Agarwal talks of sharing the planet with all creatures great and small. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In To Be or Not to Be, Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on food fads. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Olives and Art in the Inland Sea, Suzanne Kamata explores the island of Sodoshima. Click here to read.

Essays

Charlie and I: My Visit to Corsier-sur-Vevey

Nirupama Kotru talks of her trip to Charlie Chaplin’s home and writes about the legendary actor. Click here to read.

The Wonderland of Pokhara

Ravi Shankar explores, Pokhara, a scenic town in Nepal. Click here to read.

Stories

Sparks

Brindley Hallam Dennis captures the passing of an era. Click here to read.

The Moulting

PG Thomas brings us a glimpse of Kerala — the past merging to create a new present. Click here to read.

The Book Hunter

Paul Mirabile gives a tale about a strange obsession. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from What Will People Say?: A Novel by Mitra Phukan. Click here to read.

An excerpt from The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm by Rhys Hughes. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Independence. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India by Nilanjan P. Choudhary. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Ukiyo-e Days… Haiku Moments by Bina Sarkar Ellias. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers by Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar. Click here to read.

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Click here to learn more about our first anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Tags Abdul Jamil Urfi, Adam Aitken, Ahimsa, Akshada Shrotryia, Amna Ali, Anasuya Bhar, Anjali Deshpande, Balochi, Bhaskar Parichha, Bina Sarkar Ellias, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Charlie Chaplin, Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, Fakrul Alam, Fazal Baloch, Gandhi, George Freek, Ihlwha Choi, Independence, Japan, Japanese Management Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers, Jim Landwehr, Keith Lyons, Kerala, Korean, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Masud Khan, Michael R Burch, Mitali Chakravarty, Mitra Phukan, Nabendu Ghosh, Nadir Ali, Namratha Varadharajan, Nandita Haksar, Nepal, Nilanjan P Choudhary, Nirupama Kotru, Paul Mirabile, PG Thomas, Phil Wood, Pokhara, Rakhi Dalal, Ratnottama Sengupta, Ravi Shankar, Rhys Hughes, Richard Stevenson, RK Narayan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Scott Thomas Outlar, Sodoshima, Somdatta Mandal, Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India, Sutputra Radheye, Suzanne Kamata, Tagore, The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm, Ukiyo-eDays...Haiku Moments, Vipanjeet Kaur, What Will People Say?: A Novel, William Miller

Editorial

Can Love Change the World?

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date April 14, 2023
No Comments on Can Love Change the World?

The night has nearly come to an end.
The old year is almost past.
Under this dust, it will lay down
Its worn-out life at last.
Whether friend or foe,      wherever you go,
Old wrongs cast
Away. On this auspicious day,
Old grievances shed as the old year parts.

— Nobo Borshe or on New Year by Tagore

Mid-April, Thailand celebrates Songkran and Cambodia, Thingyan — water festivals like Holi. These coincide with the celebration of multiple New Years across Asia. Sikhs celebrate Baisakhi. Kerala celebrates Bishu and Tamil Nadu, Puthandu. Nepal celebrates Nava Varsha and Bengal Nobo Borsho or Poila Boisakh. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the Bengali New Year in spirit asks us to dispense with our past angst and open our hearts to the new day — perhaps an attitude that might bring in changes that are so needed in a world torn with conflicts, hatred and anger. The poet goes on to say, “I want to tie all lives with love” but do we do that in our lives? Can we? Masud Khan’s poems on love translated by Professor Fakrul Alam explore this from a modern context. From Korea, Ihlwha Choi tells us in his translation, “Loving birds is like loving stars”. But the translation that really dwells on love bringing in changes is Nabendu Ghosh’s ‘Gandhiji’, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, his daughter. The short story by Ghosh highlights the transformation of a murderous villain to a defender of a victim of communal violence, towering above divides drawn by politics of religion.

Another daughter who has been translating her father’s works is Amna Ali, daughter of award-winning Punjabi writer, Nadir Ali. In ‘Khaira, the Blind‘, the father-daughter duo have brought to Anglophone readers a lighter narrative highlighting the erasure of divides and inclusivity. A folktale from Balochistan, translated by Fazal Baloch, echoes in the footsteps of ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ — a story that can found in the Andersen’s Fairy Tales published in the nineteenth century. I wonder which narrative had come first? And how did it cross cultures retaining the original ideas and yet giving it a local colour? Was it with traders or immigrants?

That such narratives or thoughts are a global phenomenon is brought to the fore by a conversation between Keith Lyons and Asian Australian poet Adam Aitken. Aitken has discussed his cross-cultural identity, the challenges of travel, writing, and belonging. Belonging is perhaps also associated with acceptance. How much do we accept a person, a writer or his works? How much do we empathise with it — is that what makes for popularity?

Cross cultural interactions are always interesting as Rhys Hughes tells us in his essay titled ‘My Love for RK Narayan’. He writes: “Narayan is able to do two contradictory things simultaneously, namely (1) show that we are all the same throughout the world, and (2) show how cultures and people around the world differ from each other.” The underlying emotions that tie us together in a bond of empathy and commonality are compassion and love, something that many great writers have found it necessary to emphasise.

Mitra Phukan’s What Will People say?: A Novel is built around such feelings of love, compassion and patience that can gently change narrow norms which draw terrifying borders of hate and unacceptance. We carry an excerpt this time from her ‘Prologue’. Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Chitra Banerjee Divakurni’s latest , Independence. Starting from around the time of the Indian Independence too is Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India by Nilanjan P. Choudhary, which has been discussed by Rakhi Dalal. The Partition seems to colour narratives often as does the Holocaust. Sometimes, one wonders if humanity will ever get over the negative emotions set into play in the last century.

Closer to our times, when mingling of diverse cultures is becoming more acceptable in arts, Basudhara Roy introduces us to Bina Sarkar Ellias’s Ukiyo-e Days…Haiku Moments, a book that links poetry to a Japanese art-form. While a non-fiction that highlights the suffering of workers by enforcing unacceptable work ethics, Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers by Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. The narrative, he writes, “tells the story of the biggest car manufacturer in India through the voices of the workers, interviewed over three years. They give us an understanding that the Maruti Suzuki revolution wasn’t the unmitigated success it was touted to be when they tell us about their resistance to being turned into robots by uncompromising management.” That lack of human touch creates distress in people’s hearts, even if we have an efficient system of management and mass production is well elucidated in the review.

To lighten the mood, we have humour in verses from Rhys Hughes and Richard Stevenson’s tongue-in-cheek dino poems. Michael Burch’s poetry explores nuances of love and, yet, changes wrought in love has become the subject of poetry by Malachi Edwin Vethamani and Anasuya Bhar with more wistful lines by George Freek highlighting evanescence. Sutputra Radheye and Jim Landwehr bring darker nuances into poetry while Scott Thomas Outlar mingles nature with philosophical meanderings. We have more poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Abdul Jamil Urfi and many more exploring various facets of changes in our lives.

These changes are reflected in our musings too. Sengupta has written on how change is wrought on a murderous villain by the charisma of Gandhi in her father’s fiction, as well as this world leader’s impact on Ghosh and her. Devraj Singh Kalsi addresses food fads with a pinch of sarcasm. From Japan, Suzanne Kamata has written of a little island with Greek influences, a result of cultural ties brought in by the emperor Hirohito. Ravi Shankar takes us to Pokhara, Nepal, and Meredith Stephen expresses surprise on meeting a shipload of people from Colorado in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere while on her sailing adventures with beautiful photographs. Stories by moderns reflect diverse nuances depicting change. While Brindley Hallam Dennis writes of the passing of an era, PG Thomas integrates the past into the present to reflect how they have a symbiotic structure in the scheme of creating or recreating natural movements through changes wrought over time in his story. Paul Mirabile explores the darker recesses of the human existence in his fiction. As if in continuation, the excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm seems to step out of darker facets of humanity with a soupçon of wit at its best.

To create a world that endures, one looks for values that create inclusivity as reflected in these lines from Charles Chaplin’s My Autobiography, “Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest themes: love, pity and humanity.” This quote starts off a wonderful essay from film-buff Nirupama Kotru. Her narrative carries the tenor of Chaplin’s ‘themes’ to highlight not only her visit to the actor’s last home in Switzerland but also glances at his philosophy and his contributions to cinema across borders.

Our issue rotates around changes and the need for love and compassion to rise in a choral crescendo whirling with the voices of Tagore, Charles Chaplin as well as that of twenty-first century writers. Perhaps this new year, we can move towards a world – at least an imagined world — where love will wipe away weapons and war, where love will take us towards a future filled with the acceptance of myriad colours, where events like the Partition and the Holocaust will be history, just like dinosaurs.

Huge thanks to all our readers and contributors, some of whom may not have been mentioned here but are an integral and necessary part of the issue. Do pause by our April edition. I would also like to give my thanks to our indefatigable team whose efforts breathe life into our journal every month. Sohana Manzoor needs a special mention for her lovely artwork.

Thank you all and wish you a wonderful April.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Read reviews and learn more about Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World by clicking here

Tags Abdul Jamil Urfi, Adam Aitken, Amna Ali, Anasuya Bhar, Andersen's Fairy Tales, Anjali Deshpande, Asian, Australian, Baisakhi, Balochistan, Basudhara Roy, Bhaskar Parichha, Bina Sarkar Ellias, Bishu, Borderless Journal, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Charles Chaplin, Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, Colorado, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Emperor's New Clothes, Fakrul Alam, Fazal Baloch, Gandhi, George Freek, Hirohito, Holocaust, Ihlwha Choi, Japan, Japanese Management Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers, Jim Landwehr, Keith Lyons, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Maruti Suzuki, Masud Khan, Meredith Stephens, Michael Burch, Mitali Chakravarty, Mitra Phukan, My Autobiography, Nabendu Ghosh, Nadir Ali, Nandita Haksar, Nava Varsha, Nepal, Nilanjan P Choudhary, Nirupama Kotru, Nobo Borsho, Partition, Paul Mirabiles, PG Thomas, Poila Boisakh, Pokhara, Punjabi, Puthandu, Rakhi Dalal, Ratnottama Sengupta, Ravi Shankar, Rhys Hughes, Richard Stevenson, RK Narayan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Scott Thomas Outlar, Sohana Manzoor, Somdatta Mandal, Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India, Songkran, Southern Hemisphere, Sutputra Radheye, Suzanne Kamata, Switzerland, Tagore, The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm, Thingyan, Ukiyo-eDays...Haiku Moments, What Will People Say?: A Novel