[Reader-list] Kalhan, Parihaspura and Komal Gandhar

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Gargi, dear ARKP, dear all,

Many thanks Gargi, for your generous and wonderful post. And for the 
breathless games you are playing with language and thought. Many thanks 
gentlemen, I mean ARKP, for the forthrightness with which you have 
revealed the contents of your innermost selves. It makes for interesting 
diagonstic possibilities. But lets leave that for another day.

I am packing bags, catching a really early morning flight to a city that 
straddles two continents and many other faultlines. Perhaps I will have 
something quite different to think about while I am there that i can 
report on. Meanwhile, my well thumbed copy of Rajtarangini will travel 
with me.

I am quite amazed at how the ARKP cohort has perfected the practice of 
actually not reading the actual contents of what gets written in a mail 
to a fine art, and of course this gets done in tandem with the practiced 
ease with which they play out their fantasies about what actually gets 
written. I will leave the fantasies aside, because they bore me, but the 
misreading, or the holes in the reading do interest me. For instance, 
Rashneek admonishes me in  his previous mail (and by extension the 
writer I quoted) saying

"Please read Kalhana's Rajatarangni(Book V-128 to 227) and you will know 
that Kalhana has no where mentioned that Sankarvarman destroyed
Parihaspura"

If only there had been a little attention to the actual text of my 
posting, I would not have had to embarass him yet again. But I shall.

In my posting the references to Rajtarangini as a source for the 
destruction of temples is actually limited to Harsha. And it is 
difficult to deny that Kalhana is categorical in the way in which he 
describes Harsha's actions.

I had written -

"The depredations of Harsha are very well documented. I am quoting a 
book by N. N. Das Gupta, "The Struggle for Empire",Bombay Bharatiya 
Vidya Bhavan, 1957, (of course it might be suspect, since it is written 
by a Bengali Boddi/Viadya, like Gargi, me and Swapan Dasgupta the great
friend of 'Panun Kashmir', just to set the record straight, but lets
leave that aside for the moment)

Harsha (1089-1101 A.D.), who was particularly keen on destroying temple
images, two centuries before Muslim rule was established, had appointed
special officers for the purpose designated as 'devotpaatana-nayaka' or
"prefect for the destruction of icons". Dasgupta's sources for the
narrative of Harsha's depredations include Kalhan's Rajtarangini
[Struggle for Empire, p. 665]"

Neither my reference to Sankaravarman, nor Rajiv Sapru's (which I did 
indeed gloss from a kousa site) are augmented by any citation of 
Kalhan's Rajtarangini.

I bring Kalhan into the argument in the next paragraph, via N.N. 
Dasgupta, while talking about Harsha. So, here again, our sloppy reader, 
Rashneek Kher, takes two fragments from two separate sections of a text, 
which point to two different historical figures, and mashes them 
together, all the while pretending that the confusion is actually in my 
head. Texts are clear as crystal. The order in which something is typed, 
paragraphs arranged have an sometimes a banal lack of ambiguity. To 
deliberately suggest a confusion in what is otherwise transparently 
clear is to indulge in a sad spectacle of dissimulation.

That is why, dear overgrown adoloscents, my cheating patriots, one needs 
to be careful about citation and quotation, not because there are some 
abstract academic niceties involved, but because not being careful about 
when and where you misquote someone, me for instance, can only expose 
you further. I told you to watch your steps, I cajoled, persuaded, 
requested you to not let me embarass you further. And you couldn't stop 
yourselves, could you. You had to rush and make a false claim about what 
I had or had not said.

What Kalhan says or does not say about Sankaravarman, I will come to, a 
little later, in a few days, but right now, I have a flight to catch. 
Remember, Kalhan is in my hand luggage. He wil be a travelling 
companion. And I will listen to him, and get back to you all, with cruel 
exactitude. Parihaspura, what a wonderful name, the city of lampoon and 
satire. You, ARKP, could have been its best and most exemplary citizens. 
You are your own best satire, especially when you think you are being 
clever.

Incidentally, Gargi, I did dig up a slightly garbled reference to the 
disruptio of Ritwik Ghatak's Komal Gandhar.

It is in an essay by Partha Chatterjee (something tells me this is not 
Partha Chatterjee the political theorist, but some other Partha 
Chatterjee) and it is available online at -

The essay is called ; "The relentless tragedy of Ritwik Ghatak" and it 
was published in the Himal Magazine of November 2003. It is available 
online at -

http://www.himalmag.com/2003/november/essay.htm

For the sake of readerly convenience, let me quote some sections here.

1.


"The release was stymied reportedly by the party with the help of goons 
who owed allegiance to the ruling Congress party. According to Ghatak, 
Komal Gandhar played to a responsive packed house in the first week. 
Then, at the beginning of the second, he began to notice strange 
happenings in the dark of the theatre. Loud sobbing would be heard from 
different parts of the hall during funny or romantic scenes and raucous 
laughter at moments of sorrow, sending conflicting messages to the 
audience. Attendance rapidly dwindled by mid-week and fell away 
altogether at the end of it. The film had to be withdrawn, causing an 
enormous financial loss to the two producers, Mahendra Gupt and Ghatak 
himself. It was later discovered that a fairly large number of tickets 
were bought by shady characters, who had been instructed to disturb the 
real audience..."

(the writer here also suggests that it is not only the Congress, but 
also elements from the undivided CPI that disturbed the screening but 
the text is sloppy and jumpy, so I am not sure when he is attributing 
blame to whom)

"The failure engineered by forces inimical to his integrity as an 
artiste and person, completely shattered the director. He could not 
believe that the very people who not so long ago had been his comrades 
could get together to sink him. His descent into alcoholism had begun. 
Beer suddenly gave way to hard liquor and relentless drinking occupied 
him more than cinema, literature, the plastic arts or music. “He was 
signing in three bars for his drinks, and, not being able to drink 
alone, was also being the generous host”, remembered Barin Saba, 
iconoclast, filmmaker and social activist in 1977, a year after the 
director’s death. Quite naturally, funds were going to run out sooner 
than later. People had barely understood Komal Gandhar during its 
subverted release and that fact too undermined his self-confidence..."

So it seems, ARKP do have some strange, but perhaps less strident 
predecessors. And it is odd, but also delightful, that the disrupted 
film should be Komal Gandhar. Your original post about Komal Gandhar 
seems to have the elements of a a strange retroactive reverse prophesy.

Good night, and keep the posts flying

Shuddha