English । ইংরেজি

I never imagined that I would be writing an obituary for someone so full of life as Soumitra Chatterjee. Those who were lucky enough to know him at reasonably close quarters, which is quite a large number, it would really take a long time to accept that he is no more. Rarely has one come across an all-round cultural personality with absolutely no airs. He was in life as he appeared (and will always appear) in his films.

If we are to select one festival that every Hindu in every corner of India celebrates in some form or the other, we would invariably mention ‘Diwali’. It epitomises the operational plurality of Hinduism that has thrived for millennia without a high command, headquarters or one designated holy book.

As many of us admit, one of the major mistakes committed by a secular India was to assume that religious tolerance and amity would last forever. The secular state’s duty was over by declaring public holidays on the major festivals of all religions, but it never seriously considered explaining to the people what and why these celebrations were observed.

Many have often wondered how ancient Indic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (Sikhism is not that ‘ancient’) survived and prospered for millennia without a designated holy book like the Bible or the Koran and with no Mecca, Vatican or Jerusalem to guide people. With a little introspection, we come to realise that it is actually this absence of a ‘central command’ and non-uniform format that account for this.

People often wonder why Bengalis worship Durga on the grandest scale possible during Navaratri and why they do not observe the mandatory fasts or rituals — instead gorging on non-vegetarian food. And, this propensity is not limited to any class or caste because Brahmans and so-called upper castes lead the way to celebrate with the best of fish and mutton dishes. The other question is why is it that only Bengal’s image of Ma Durga is so completely different from the rest of India?

It is a pity that after managing to control the rates of infection, recovery and mortality from the coronavirus reasonably better than five other comparable metropolises, Calcutta now appears determined to tease its fate during Durga Puja. When the coronavirus appeared in tiny numbers, knee-jerk, unplanned, nationwide lockdowns were clamped down with a lot of drama, with politics and image-building taking precedence. The social media was inundated with hate-filled messages targeting West Bengal’s special incompetence in combating the pandemic, ignoring the fact that most other states were floundering as well.

Enough is enough — says Bollywood and many others who are sick and tired of toxic trial by media and daily abuses hurled on tabloid television. Terms like “dirt”, “filth”, “scum”, “druggies”, “cocaine and LSD drenched” and “the dirtiest industry in the country” have been freely used by some obviously-interested channels in the past few weeks, that went on lynching the reputation of film personalities with just wisps of their ‘evidence’.

Despite truckloads of criticism that are heaped on all governments all over the world, they are still looked upon to restore peace and order. In general, they are expected to be fairer than those who are involved in parochial civil or criminal disputes among citizens. Of course, local-level policemen and other overlords can get really nasty if their interests or their oversized egos are hurt. Many also develop vested interests, with or without gratification, and yet, the system creaks along, everywhere.

The claim that some television channels were caught red-handed bribing households to raise their television rating points (TRP) was met with howls of approval from the rest of the media and an exasperated public and, of course, equally cacophonous protests from those accused of manipulation. Interestingly, almost the entire TV news industry appears to have united as never before against this reported malpractice. In this bedlam, major issues are, however, getting mixed up and while scores are being settled, the unprecedented nationwide interest, alarm and angst should call for some positive course-correction.

As the 150th birth anniversary celebrations end and the Mahatma returns to his confined habitat of museums, a fact worth noticing is the visible turn — we still cannot call it a turnaround— in the attitude of the Hindu Right to the man they hounded to death.'

Strange as it may sound, there was a wave of disenchantment about Gandhi ji in West Bengal after Independence and it was passed on to us who were born within a few years of freedom. It stemmed, perhaps, from the shoddy treatment that was meted out to Netaji by a group in the Congress that was close to the Mahatma. Many of us, therefore, began with a negative "opening balance" about Gandhi and that is what makes our turnaround more interesting.

Of the three labour Bills passed by Parliament recently, one has a special dispensation for unorganised workers, who have surely been neglected by successive governments. The utter chaos and largely avoidable pain that migrant labourers, inter-state or intra-state, suffered after the sudden announcement of the nationwide lockdown in March this year is still fresh in people’s minds.

In the performing and the visual arts, there are larger numbers who achieved iconic positions but in the domain of cultural popularisation, theorisation and management, we can recall only very few. Dr Kapila Vatsyayan was the last in the unforgettable trio of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar as her predecessors. Each of them embarked upon separate missions within the vast space of culture.

No, I am neither going to attack nor defend Rhea Chakraborty or Kangana Ranaut. The very fact that they are hogging prime time is repugnant to those who look forward to news for information. For entertainment, there are endless frothy soap operas and many love to see merciless boxing and wrestling matches as proxies for their suppressed rage. But when news television subsumes these genres, it cheats and misleads a nation.

The annual festive worship of Durgā is so comfortably settled in the Bengali imagination that her apparent anomalies and contradictions are hardly examined. The first issue is that popular demand in Bengal mandates that she has to be seen with her four 'children' — which is most unlike other parts of India. The second is derived from this as these four `children' appear quite disinterested in Durgā's ferocious battle with Mahiṣāsura, nor do they play any role in it. The third anomaly lies in the fact that Durgā in Bengal appears resplendent in her best dress with a lot of jewellery, even as she is engaged in a mortal combat.

There is nothing really amiss if a singer insists on bringing his own musicians, as they understand him rather well. But then, when he has pole-vaulted himself to the most critical position of deciding the fate of 130 crore souls, there is cause for alarm at such an infantile insistence. The administration of this vast, complex country requires real professional skills and not just agreeability or the carrying out of commands.

Onam, which bids farewell, is much more than a festival of joy, for it represents the core of the great reconciliatory heart of Hinduism. Most such celebrations recall the victory of a great God or Goddess over dark forces, personified usually by a demonic Asura. The Ramayana marks the destruction of a Rakshasa while the Durga Puja emphasises Devi’s triumph over Mahishasura.

How does one summarise the life of a patriarch who strode the stage of Indian politics for over half a century? As a titan, he towered well above the rather diminutive height that god given him, along with a razor sharp mind and a phenomenal memory for details and numbers.

When he was picked up by Indira Gandhi in 1969 after his skilful campaign in West Bengal that ensured the electoral victory of her father’s favourite, Krishna Menon, little did either of them realise what life had in store for them.

The atmosphere is so charged after the ceremony for the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya that it seems well nigh impossible to discuss positive aspects of this epic in the life of India without flare-ups. But we are not here to debate whether it is myth or history, or even bits of both, nor condone or condemn the destruction of another place of worship. Here, our focus is on the historic unifying role of an epic that is viewed by some as a sharply divisive text.

As in the recent past, on this Independence Day too, we shall hear a lot of chest-thumping from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, along with a call to immerse ourselves in patriotic passion. But when the present prime minister of India recalls the role of our immortal martyrs of the freedom struggle, will he really tell us the whole truth about this phase? No: he will not make the mistake of mentioning that the organisation that commands and inspires his political party did not participate in the struggle for independence, and that it actively opposed it at times.