CYNICISM AND CRITICISM ARE TWO FACTORS
THOSE EASILY DESCRIBE JOURNALISTS……….!!!
Obviously I have both in plenty. There
are two other elements vital in journalism those follow taking their own path – The EGO and Honesty or the lack of it. Ego is in plenty ! and honesty – generally a
shortfall.
In the meantime – let us recall a
comment from the illustrious scientist Albert Einstein …..:: “Everybody is a
genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live
its whole life believing that it is stupid”.
In our country – who are stupids? Those
who avoid the beaten track? Sensible world call them ‘mad’ and ‘failed jokers’
too!
So when illustrious writer Mahashweta Devi died on
July 28, 2016 – words of condolence messages, twitter oneliners and Facebook
messages went around. Those who knew and deserved to write about her did so –
others who hardly had any knowledge and wanted to make a fashion statement also
did so.
Most – if not all - commentaries were laudatory. And
why not? She was great and she is no longer.
Does the story end there? My story does not. I bring
back my CYNICISM TO WORK. Ego too catches up and there’s a thin borderline
clash between honesty and dishonesty!
What’s so special about Mahashweta Devi’s writings?
Obituaries flooded in. President, Vice President, Congress chief Sonia,
film makers, Mamata Banerjee – who gets inspiration to paint to write poems for
“crores” – none could be miss.
A tweet went around with Sushma Swaraj naming “wrong
books” of Mahasweta Devi as the busy External Affairs Minister allegedly
mistook another Devi – Ashapurna Devi’s works! You could not have missed it.
Now let us turn the table – why she attained the
greatness? What theme did her writings actually seek to propagate? Was she
selective? If so why? Tribals of north east are also tribals, do they figure in
her chronicle of being “a conscience keeper” – as none other than virtuos ‘Saint’
Sonia Gandhi had described the illustrious writer?
You are right, I am being cynic and stretching it
too far ! May be, may be not!
But will it be wrong to argue: It is as though saving the remains of Marxism is more
important than saving humanity. Whereever Mahashweta traveled, a particular
thought process prevailed. Because India’s communists and Marxists “virtuous”
gang had nothing to do with north eastern states – except Tripura – Mahasweta
Devi did not go either.
I am not finding fault. But as a northeastern
boy – who can perhaps never have a “hut” of his own north east hills and
valleys – can have this grudge. Is it really unjustified?
Then comes in her vintage best role
after 2002 mayhem in Gujarat. Mark her wordings – no doubt she has endeared herself
as so dearly to ultra-left “Neo-Lady Jinnah” Ms Mamata Banerjee!
''The people who perpetrated heinous vandalism
in Ayodhya in December 1992 and stoked communal flames are again at their game
for the last few months. We know the pattern. We even know the remedy. The
trouble is a complete lack of political will to put a stop this kind of
madness'', she said in her famous letter to the then President K R Narayanan.
Politically correct again! What about those who
died in the train mayhem at Godhra?
So, at this juncture – first rapid fire quiz query: What Mahashweata Devi did
or said after Nandigram and Singur?
“Even
at her advanced age she did not hesitate to extend her support to the peoples’
struggles in Singur, Nandigram, and Junglemahal, and fought for the release of
political prisoners,” says an obit in 'Economic and Political Weekly', a magazine once founded and edited by her maternal uncle Sachin Choudhary
Readers
of these blogs know for sure that I have no sympathies for Marxists and their
hypocrisies.
But
the clash of CPI-M and pro-Naxalite elements in Singur-Nandigram chapter of
Bengal polity is a question the answer to which actually lay in the womb of
time.
Will it be wrong to say - politically Mahashweta Devi had been close to the
“revolutionary life in Indian politics” and her books actually bear testimony
to explicit sympathy with the Naxalites?
Take
for instance – what is generally given out as her watershed – defining moment -
novel of 1974, Hajar Chaurashir Ma (Mother Of 1084), which is one of Devi’s
most widely read works.
The
book deals with the life of a Naxalite – whose identity is later dismissed as
mere No. 1084 in morgue. It actually ends up justifying Naxal movement – something
that was later called “single biggest challenge of India”.
Supposed
to deal with “the emotional struggles” of a mother when she is summoned to
identify her son lying dead in the police morgue – also later filmed well by
Govind Nihalini (starring Jaya Bachchan), the book and the mother protagonist
seemed to endorse the path of Naxalism.
Post 1970-91 plot – when Bengal had witnessed the first taste of Naxalism that started from a place called Naxalbari in West Bengal --- the mother actually understands “her son’s death”! She understands how the double standards of bourgeois society had forced her son to rebel against it !
‘I find my
people still groaning under hunger, landlessness, indebtedness and bonded
labor. An anger, luminous, burning and passionate, directed against a system
that has failed to liberate my people from these horrible constraints is the
only source of inspiration in all my writing.
All the parties to the Left as
well as to the Right have failed to keep their commitment to the common people.
I do not hope to see in my lifetime any reason to change this conviction of
mine. Hence I go on writing to the best of my abilities about the people, so
that I can face myself without any sense of guilt and shame. For a writer faces
judgement in her lifetime and remains answerable.’
I am afraid elsewhere and with someone else - one could have heard - why you are glorifying Maoism?
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| Blogger in North Bengal |
The
ultra-Marxist ideas and history – two vital elements of Bengali intellectualism
of her time – certainly fascinated her.
Hence
Godhra victims of Feb 27, 2002 and hundreds of Nirendra Devs chased out of
north east and the prolonged agony of northeast tribals did not figure much in
her works – both fictions and non-fictions.
ends
not getting the MAZA..u are running around the bush on the mahasweta devi story
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