[Reader-list] Dhanonjoy Chatterjee

[vishwajyoti ghosh]

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following is an intresting edit in the times of india, today (aug 16th, '04) 
If the hanging of Chatterjee is a historical verdict for the self righteous whole sale empathisers, will salman khan,dara singh, sanjeev nanda, d.p yadav and his sons, shahbuddin and sushil sharma (to name a very very few) be given the same verdict? 
Here I can't help but recollect Chatterjee's statement: 
"In my next life, I want to be born as a rich man"


A Lost Culture: Dhananjoy Episode Exposes Bhadralog Underbelly
JAY BHATTACHARJEE

[ MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2004 12:00:00 AM ]
 
Dhananjoy Chatterjee's life has been snuffed out and the court's order complied with. Whether justice was delivered or denied is entirely another matter. More than the unedifying ritual of state-ordained murder, the recent events highlighted the disconcerting bloodlust of the country's educated middle and upper-middle classes. Leading the brigade was Kolkata's Bengali bhadralog, whose forefathers did so much to usher in the intellectual rebirth of India nearly two centuries ago. 

The fact that the vast majority of the current crop of bhadralog also swears allegiance to the two largest communist parties is equally significant. Today, the moot point is whether the bhadralog and Left parties are as bhadra as they claim to be. 

The images that have been relentlessly repeated in the national electronic media could not have failed to leave a lasting impact on most of us. On the one hand, there was this desperately impoverished rural family that clearly did not have the social and economic clout to put forward its side of the picture; on the other, an organised menagerie of the party apparatchiks was holding public rallies and baying for blood. The Bengal chief minister's spouse almost snatched the mike away from the channel reporter to shriek that Chatterjee must keep his rendezvous with the hangman. 

This cosy alliance of the bhadralog with the executioner is a curious phenomenon. Is the Bengali bhadralog's much- vaunted civility, humanity, empathy and tolerance only a veneer that slips away to reveal atavistic instincts? Is Marxism in Bengal only a casual mantra to wield political power over hapless citizens? Marx would have baulked to see this kind of discrimination, founded on a typically Indian pattern of patronage. 

The educated and professional Bengali is mesmerised by the political power as well as the economic benefits which his Left-ruled government can either dole out or withhold. The Left displayed its retributive fangs, out of keeping with its bhadralog image, only to find the people falling in line. Apart from a small group of concerned citizens which dared to oppose the party line, Kolkata conducted itself disgracefully, similar to a lynch mob in the American South in the last century. The party, it would appear, has little use for humanist niceties anymore. 

The Chatterjee execution throws up at least four disturbing questions. First, the state government, not otherwise given to expedient conduct, acted in indecent haste. Having taken more than nine years to vacate the earlier stay granted by the high court, the state of West Bengal got itself into a tizzy to implement the death sentence. Why do governments that are poor in delivering public services, proceed with sudden efficiency to deliver an individual to his death? The state and the people seem united in their bloodthirst. 

Second, the class angle is hard to overlook — strange how the Reds of Bengal missed it. Former Supreme Court chief justice P N Bhagwati said in 1982 that death penalty was unconstitutional because the overwhelming number of those so convicted was poor. A few years back, the same state of West Bengal did not oppose the plea in the Supreme Court by a wealthy father-son duo to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment. The Baniks were convicted of murdering their daughter-in-law and wife. Their death sentence was confirmed by the high court as well as the Supreme Court. On that occasion, we did not see the West Bengal first-lady screaming on camera that she wanted the two to face the gallows. Nor did we have the unedifying spectacle of a garishly dressed school principal repeating ad nauseam on television that the accused had committed a 'heinous' offence. 

Third, the availability of adequate legal assistance to poor persons at the initial stage of trial and conviction is also a matter that should have engaged the Communists. Admittedly, Chatterjee managed to get legal assistance of the highest quality in the final stages of his ordeal. However, Indian criminal system is such that many critical aspects vital to the life and freedom of the accused cannot be brought up at the appeal stage, and certainly very rarely before the apex court. 

Finally, we are witnessing the systemic decline, if not the death, of the old bhadralog values that did the country proud and served it well for the last two centuries. The Bengalis in West Bengal suffered a raw deal in the last six decades, starting with the famine and the Partition in the 1940s. Yet, they kept alive the flame of reason and enquiry. Is that light fading away? 

Jorge Semprun in his epic holocaust novel, The Long Voyage, recounts the journey of a French Resistance fighter and a Spanish Civil War veteran to the death camp at Buchenwald. When the train halts at the station in Trier, a small town, groups of Nazi boy scouts are seen hurling stones at the prisoners cowering in the cattle cars. The two protagonists ask themselves why this was happening at such a nondescript location. The answer is soon clear: This was the birthplace of Marx and the Nazis had chosen it to taunt the prisoners (many of whom were communists) on their death ride. This was German society at its nadir. 

Is something similar happening to the bhadralog Marxists? 

(The author is an investment consultant.)  
 
  




VISHWAJYOTI GHOSH,
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