[Reader-list] What's pain got to do with it?

Sun Sep 2 19:29:46 IST 2007

Dear M Ray

  I can speak only for myself.

  Neither am I anti Muslim, nor am I anti-Islam. Both Muslims and Islam are a part of India.

  I am a "secularist" too. One where religion is a private affair between a person and presumed "divinity". Religion has no place, in my opinion in the affairs of the Nation.

  Anyone, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Sikh, Jew, Atheist, Agnostic etc (or any yet to emerge religionist) who threatens or undermines my Nation, is it's enemy and my enemy.

  No identity of a humanbeing transcends (in this our world) the recognition of what Passport you hold or are eligible for. 

  Only the "la la landers" believe otherwise.

  M Ray, I do recognise the point you are making. Those who ignore the situation, will do so at their own peril  

  Kshmendra Kaul   

MRSG <mrsg at vsnl.com> wrote:
  Dear Aditya, Rashneek , Kshemendra , Pawan and Rahul
I have not entered in this Kashmir debate execpt that I informed that 
Kashmir is only 20% of all J&K. (Generally I donot enter this e-debates, 
only because of my fellowship here, I go through this list and sometimes 
cannot resist to get involved)
HOWEVER MY SUGGESTION TO YOU THAT NEVER LISTEN TO A 'SECULAR BENGALI HINDU 
REFUGEE'. They are the worst of backboneless people on the earth. Bengali 
hindus are being raped, killed, looted everyday in Bangladesh (previous East 
Pakistan) and they are coming in India everyday. But nearly all the refugees 
are not only silent but also go anyway to stop talking about it. While in 
las 50 years not a single muslim has migrated from West Bengal to 
EPakistan/Bangladesh, millions of bengali hindus have come to West Bengal 
and they are coming and coming. Bangladesh's hindu population has come down 
from 30% in 1951 to 9% in 2001, worst ethnic cleansing in modern history. 
Not only that. now Bangladeshi Muslims are coming in hordes. West Bengal's 
demography has changed. Its just matter of time to turn West Bengal into 
Bangladesh. SO PLEASE NEVER debate with them, its useless. Let them go on 
with their intellectual acrobatics till some day their houses are looted, 
their women are raped. If you can do anything yourself, do that only.
M. Ray

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gargi Sen" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 6:43 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] What's pain got to do with it?

> Hello everyone,
> I am a self-confessed lurker on this list. Till date I have only read
> postings and followed a few debates. But the recent spate of mails had a
> stunning effect - to paraphrase Shuddha &shy; and stunned even me out of the
> zone of silence into speech. And as I spent most of the night in reading 
> the
> incredible number of recent mails, I may as well stay up and write. And
> despite the circumstances, I am happy to become visible, albeit virtually.
>
> This mail though is addressed to 5 young men called Aditya, Rashneek ,
> Kshemendra , Pawan and Rahul. And my apologies to the rest of the list for
> length of the mail.
> Gargi
>
> Dear Aditya, Rashneek , Kshemendra , Pawan and Rahul,
> You know you are probably going about it &shy; it being the stopping of
> Jashn-e-azadi - all wrong. You probably do know that the more you talk¹
> about a film/ book/ art/ food anything, the more you spread an interest
> about it. Any talk of banning¹ send interests zooming sky high. And to
> point to uncensored¹ you hit bulls eye. Really. The best course probably
> might have been to simply ignore it. Indifference probably kills faster 
> than
> any kind of engagement. But you have done what you had to and now the 
> damage
> is done. And the more you try and stop it, the more you will push up the
> interest button. Its kind of inversely proportionate. Is that really what
> you want?
>
> But I understand your pain. I understand where its coming from. I too come
> from a so called refugee family. Both my grandfathers lost everything &shy;
> their land, their trees, their homestead, one even lost his entire life¹s
> savings in 1947. Incidentally but not so coincidentally both came to
> Calcutta - you see this was before my parents met or married &shy; a city 
> quite
> hostile to the refugees as also to their dialect and culture. My nuclear
> family moved to Delhi roughly when I was born. I grew up with the 
> knowledge
> that home¹ was some place else.¹ But where exactly no one could tell.
> Functionally it was Calcutta. But logically, it should have been either
> Barishal or Jashore, where we couldn¹t go &shy; don¹t get me wrong, visas were
> given, we just lacked the cash. I grew up in Delhi feeling quite alienated
> from my classmates who had roots, deep root: they had villages they knew 
> and
> visited, ancestral homes, common cultures. I had none, or they were
> somewhere else. And any attempt to find roots was a lost cause because 
> where
> or what could they go into? Bangladesh? It didn¹t exist when my 
> grandparents
> exited. East Pakistan? That doesn¹t exist any longer. So my childhood 
> roots
> could only go up in air.
>
> But coming back to the pain, I wonder who can I draw as enemy, who can I
> blame? Who caused the pain? Because for certain my family, and families,
> went through pain. Extreme pain. Loss rings deep. Even today wedding
> invitations carry markers like ABC (name of the father of bride/ groom) of
> DEF (place in Bangladesh) at present a resident of XYZ (somewhere in 
> India)
> invite you to the wedding of.... Do you understand? 60 years after our
> families left we, at least those who do the correct¹ things like 
> marriage,
> still claim our lineage to a land which has ceased to be ours 60 years 
> ago.
> So who¹s the enemy? Who truncated that umbilical cord between land and
> culture?
>
> The problem was that that was too complex. I couldn¹t really think that 
> one
> through. So I though let me see if locating an identifiable enemy is 
> beyond
> my capabilities is there at least an errant cousin, a filmmaker who rides 
> on
> pain to claim fame? You know I gave it some very serious thought indeed 
> and
> I think Ghatak might just fit the bill. Ritwik i.e. Especially his Komal
> Gandhar. Which is a less celebrated film than his more celebrated ones. 
> But
> the storyline, the form and especially his protagonists and their ideology
> is great for our common endeavour that I am gong to suggest in a minute. 
> But
> have you seen the film? Do see it if you haven¹t. It uses a theatre group 
> to
> shamelessly propagate an ideology that has been rubbished even on this 
> list.
>
> I suggest we call for a ban on this film. Imagine what mileage we¹ll get. 
> Or
> do I mean the film will get? Whatever. We can claim that all independent
> filmmakers are fundamentally fundamentalists and unable to connect to 
> pain.
>
> Apart from that you see I also have a vested interest. Komal Gandhar 
> happens
> to be my personal favourite, probably because personal taste is not 
> dictated
> by popular consent. And I am often a little puzzled as to how less it is
> rated compared to Ghatak¹s other films. So see, if such a campaign can be
> started, the film will for certain become extremely popular. Very popular
> indeed. Many people who don¹t know about the film will come to know of it.
> It will get screened in different cities and halls &shy; we are after all
> celebrating THE 60th year &shy; and this film does address the P word .
> Academics might start to write about, even high-brow lists like
> Sarai-readers list might comment on the film, and for all you know, even
> Shuddha might write about it. I recall reading a great piece by him on the
> motif of the bahurupiyas confronting two errant children in an abandoned
> airfield in the film Subarnarekha. But I can¹t remember or at least 
> haven¹t
> seen anything by him on Komal Gandhar.
>
> Over the last 6 months I watched all of you and learnt that that is
> sure-fire strategy. I am impressed by your dedication and strategy.
> Especially your strategy. And your dedication to continually evolve it. So 
> I
> am suggesting this. Why make a hero out of Kak? He is such a
> johny-come-lately. Why not strike at the roots of all such films? Komal
> Gandhar probably is the precursor to, or the grandfather of, films like
> Jashn-e-azadi. So hit the root. The branches are sure to fall off.
>
> Let me know your thoughts.
>
> Coming back to the narrative of my family and pain allow me to tell you a
> little about my father &shy; I¹ll leave the mother-motif for another sleepless
> night. My father, who is now dead, was once young. Probably at your age
> Aditya he joined the Socialists. You see he didn¹t have the hind-sight of
> history so he did what his heart and conscious dictated. He was quite 
> close
> to Lohiya and JP and in his twenties became the president of the Western
> Railwaymen¹s Union. But he was recalled from Bombay to Delhi by JP who
> wanted him to work on some new initiative. Anyway, he did as told, also
> married, and I make an appearance on the scene. In the late 60s, when I 
> am
> 4 or 5 one of the tasks he carried out was to provide a safe meeting 
> place,
> in his house, for Sheikh Abdullah and Mridula Sarabhai to meet and
> confabulate. Do you know what they &shy; not my father but the other two &shy; 
> were
> talking about? The RIK certainly does, no? Its recorded history after all.
> On Kashmir after all.
>
> Recorded history does not always record the stories foot soldiers. My
> father, by allowing a person under house arrest, to meet another who was
> soon going to be put under house arrest, called on himself the ire of the
> state. Or is it nation? Or nation-state? Whatever. But as a 4 or 5 year 
> old
> I knew meaning of words like intelligence¹ shadowed¹ and the dreaded 
> word
> CID. At least I think that was the dreaded word. My father continues on 
> his
> chosen path. All as a socialist. No hind-sight you see. And I watched from
> the side-lines of the side-line. When I was 12 I learn about MISA, learn 
> to
> live with a missing father¹ who¹s underground,¹ watch countless raids 
> into
> our homes; for some strange reasons totally beyond my comprehension all
> those raids¹ were carried out by the IT department!
>
> But all that was as a child. With no real understanding. Only feelings. It
> wasn¹t till much later that I learnt that that tall, bald headed man,
> wearing a crisp, white Kurta-pajama, the one who towered over most men by 
> a
> foot or so, the one who sat on our verandah talking endlessly to a woman 
> in
> crisp white salwar kameez, the man also known as the Lion of Kashmir, had
> led battles against various causes one of which was the choice of 
> accession
> to the republic of India. Funnily, my classmate - or was he my brother¹s
> classmate, whatever &shy; his grandfather who was once the King of Kashmir had
> actually opted to go with Pakistan.
> A Kashmiri Pundit, a maharaja to boot, wants to secede from India while a
> Muslim, leading a tribal brigade, wants to remain. Now I think I¹ve lost 
> the
> plot altogether.
>
> But coming back to my father, a refugee who makes democratic choice, in a
> democratic country/ nation/ nation-state/ whatever, to go into politics,
> albeit oppositional politics, is continuously hounded by the country/
> nation/ nation-state/ whatever for you know what? His political beliefs. 
> The
> story doesn¹t end at Emergency. Then there was the Kudal Commission. JP 
> was
> already dead. He, alone, battles the government/ country/ nation/
> nation-state/ whatever for a simple reason: a wrong¹ allegation, a
> mistake.¹ For 6 years. Alone.
>
> I write about him because I read many of your mails tonight and he came
> back. He¹s been dead almost 13 years now, but reading your mails I got
> another perspective on the man, a mere foot soldier though. He paid the
> price of choosing the wrong political set up at a time when democratic
> systems and institutions were even less mature. No hind sight you see. But
> that apart, in my personal recollection I don¹t remember any litany of 
> pain.
> He laughed instead. He was an extremely funny and fun loving man. Deeply
> irreligious he had immense faith. He couldn¹t believe in God so chose to
> believe in men. Had he not suffered? Of course he had. Had not seen 
> trauma?
> Of course he had. He was almost a youth at partition. And like every other
> family, ours too has horrific stories. And he was a witness, not even 
> spared
> by age. So, I am feeling a little puzzled tonight. Why didn¹t he complain?
> At least he could have called for a ban. On Komol Gandhar perhaps? Maybe
> then he might have made it to recorded history as a punctuation mark? Or 
> at
> the very least he should/ could have spent his life complaining, bitterly
> about all those fame seekers, trouble makers, the salt rubbers.
>
> I wonder why didn¹t he do that? At least he could have hidden his obvious
> love for life, remained a victim? Was it necessary to be so blatantly in
> love with life and living? And tonight I begin to see¹ that it was this
> inexplicable love he had for life that made him choose unpopular causes.
> Too, too many to even list, forget recount. But I am grateful to all five 
> of
> you for helping me to see¹ the obvious, for helping me to connect to my
> father, now dead, in a completely new light. But you know, how sometimes 
> you
> can miss the very obvious simply because its staring you in the face? So
> thanks yaar.
>
> And there is one more thing. The Kudal Commission showed to me, and
> hopefully to a few others too, that even the entire might of the mighty
> state is often unable to make false charges stick. So what¹s the point,
> yaar?
>
> Anyway, you see I read many of your mails tonight and I thought of pain.
> Impossible to define scientifically. I mean is it at all possible to use
> some sort of measure to see whose pain is deeper and hurts more? But 
> tonight
> I thought it might not be a bad idea to try and make a measuring 
> instrument
> like that. Then we could compare all of us who have experienced pain &shy; my
> father, I albeit from the side lines, all of you &shy; whose pain is greater? 
> Or
> should we leave that &shy;it - to the crux of the film Hiroshima Mon Amour?
>
> I am not sure any longer. Actually to be sure of anything is getting
> increasingly difficult. I am sure you don¹t know what I mean.
>
> If you have read till here, thank you for your patience.
>
> I can¹t really ask God to bless you, but I do wish you lots and lots of
> abundant energy for your cause, for your cause can only help my cause - 
> that
> of showing and screening all films to everybody.
>
> Gargi Sen
>
>
>
>
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