[Reader-list] Kalhan, Parihaspura and Komal Gandhar

[Pawan Durani]

Shaddha ,

An your mesage is ??????????????


Pawan Durani


On 9/6/07, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>
> 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
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