This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale

by Subimal Misra

  The mighty are respected –Sanjay, in his final interview

  New Delhi, 28 June 1980

  A few days before his death, Sanjay Gandhi said in an interview: ‘Respect for India will grow only if there is a strong economy. In 1976, we exported cement, sugar, coal and steel. But now we import everything. With the coming of the Janata government in between, the country is in the doldrums. Only the Nehru family can take the country to the Everest of progress.’

  Immersion of Sanjay’s mortal remains

  The mortal remains of the prematurely killed Sanjay Gandhi were today immersed in Allahabad’s holy prayag-sangam and in various holy rivers and lakes. The mortal remains of Sanjay were brought to Allahabad in a special train by Rajiv Gandhi. He immersed the mortal remains in the deep waters of the triveni-sangam of the Ganga, Yamuna and the almost-extinct Saraswati. During the immersion, V.C. Shukla slipped and fell into the water.

  Ashes strewn in different parts of India by helicopter

  Maneka Gandhi, together with her mother and brother, left with Sanjay’s ashes for Haridwar. Sanjay’s ashes were immersed today with due solemnity at Varanasi’s Harishchandra ghat, in the Ganga in Patna, the Godavari in Nasik, the Kaveri in Coorg, the Shatadru in Punjab, Pushkar, Matrikund and Galata in Rajasthan, Narmada in Madhya Pradesh, and also in four rivers of Andhra Pradesh.

  Aggrieved Vyjayanthimala’s dance-plan

  New Delhi: The famed danseuse and film actress, Vyjayanthimala, today informed the prime minister in a condolence message that she has made a plan for an appropriate dance towards expressing reverence for Sanjay’s immortal memory, and that she herself would dance.

  Immersion festival in Calcutta

  Sanjay Gandhi’s ashes were immersed in the Ganga in Calcutta on Saturday afternoon. Two union ministers brought the ashes in a special plane from Delhi. Their eyes were unslept. Wrapped in white cloth, the ashes were taken in a procession of Congress leaders and workers to the Chandpal ghat. A minister’s family had instructed that the ashes be immersed in the bosom of the river before the onset of the inauspicious time. The two ministers and some Congress (I) leaders took the ashes by motor launch to the middle of the Ganga. They returned after the immersion. There was a little bit of rain then.

  Boat with journalists capsizes in Bombay during the ceremony for immersion of ashes

  A boat carrying journalists capsized in the Arabian Sea near Chowpatty in south Bombay. The journalists had gone there to cover the ceremony for the immersion of Sanjay’s ashes. Fortunately, the incident occurred close to the shore and the water was very shallow. All the journalists reached the shore safely. However, all their notes were drenched in the water.

  Excesses in the name of Sanjay

  The way in which democratic ideals have been disregarded in order to whip up public sentiment around Sanjay – has been severely criticized by the Lok Dal party. The declaration of national mourning and the flying of the national flag at half-mast were objected to by them. The way in which the site constructed to commemorate freedom fighters has been converted into a family crematorium was akin to throttling democracy. The presence of the service chiefs at the last rites as well as the flying of a military helicopter have been criticized by them. The country will not easily forget the way in which the difference between people, state, party and family was erased.

  Want Rajiv in place of Sanjay

  ‘Let Rajiv be made the All India Youth Congress (I) leader!’ Twenty Congress (I) leaders from various states sent a memorandum with this appeal to Indira Gandhi on the very day of Sanjay’s death. Delhi’s Congress (I) leaders have informed Indira Gandhi that only Rajiv could fill Sanjay Gandhi’s place. They relayed that some Congress (I) workers would stage a silent dharna at the prime minister’s residence demanding that Rajiv Gandhi be brought into active politics as soon as possible.

  MAO TSE TUNG HAS NOT YET BEEN BORN IN THIS COUNTRY, ON THIS BELOVED EARTH OF OURS

  In China, a strong drive is underway at present to catch criminal offenders. The number of criminals has been rising continuously since the year 1956. China’s public security authority has found seven kinds of criminals over the past three years. They are: murderers, rapists, burglars, thieves, vandals, users of explosives, and destroyers of state property. The officials are worried about the rate at which the number of criminals is growing. It poses a grave danger to communism. It is a matter of disgrace. They are of the view that, ever since the third session of the eleventh congress, the security system has not improved at all. Five years have passed in this way. Consequently, the number of reported and unreported crimes among China’s common people has risen manifold. They are worried about this. They are unable to sleep at night.

  Basti-dwellers gaze greedily at the house above in which inverters provide light during load-shedding.

  TO THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE, EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD / 1

  In an exploitative society, the state apparatus is created so as to perpetuate exploitation. When the survival struggles of ordinary people cannot be accommodated within the façade of democracy, they resort to bullets.

  ALLENDE’S STORY

  When Allende was elected President of Chile, workers across the country declared full support for him. But Allende wanted to work within the laws and constitution of the exploitative state apparatus. These laws, as well as the constitution – created under the bourgeois framework – were essentially against the public interest. In December 1971, a few days after Allende was elected, under the leadership of the MIR, the sharecroppers in southern Chile began a campaign of occupying land in the large estates. The centrist Allende and his communist ministers did not approve of this. ‘We are aware of the problems of peasants but we are against occupation of land in this manner.’ Allende wanted to please everybody. It’s correct that he did not go against the common people, but he did not anger the exploiting class either. In this double-bind situation, just as Chile’s elite class was unhappy, similarly American imperialism too kept searching for a pretext to intervene. They were frightened on seeing the efforts of the people to organize. They began to conspire to overthrow the government because they were not being able to make Allende work entirely for them. As a first means, they tried to covertly bring about a military coup. That attempt failed. Even in such a situation, Allende did not want to leave his so-called legal route. The people wanted to organize themselves and build up armed resistance. Allende’s democratic route came to be the biggest impediment. In an exploitative society, the state apparatus is created so as to perpetuate exploitation. Allende wanted to eradicate exploitation from the state apparatus. That’s why the exploiter class adopted direct means of removing him. Thus far, they had been able to carry out exploitation under the banner of the democratic system, but now, by killing Allende they flagrantly followed fascist methods. Another version of whatever had once happened in Hitler’s Germany and in Indonesia found full expression in Chile. When the survival struggles of ordinary people cannot be accommodated within the façade of democracy, they resort to bullets. Allende’s widow, in an interview to Excelsior newspaper on 29 September 1973, said: ‘Now we can understand how correct the people were. Attaining power through elections is not all. There was a great need to arm the people and build a revolutionary army. It’s because we were unarmed … we could not fight against the bombing.’

  When the survival struggles of ordinary people cannot be accommodated within the façade of democracy, they resort to bullets

  TO THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE, EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD / 2

  A recent report from China: In the city of Shanghai, a person by the name of Si En Fushing used about ten young women as models, took obscene pictures of them and made blue films. The Shanghai administration sentenced the man to death. Before that, the leader of the obscene racket had, of course, to present himself before the people’s court. An ever-vigilant watch has been instituted so that this incident is not repeated. A leading newspaper in China said men like Fushing were akin to garba
ge-dumps. In this regard, a question has arisen in the minds of some Sinologists about how such an incident was possible in that country, especially in the period after the Cultural Revolution. Was this an isolated incident, or were there more instances like this, which are not always easily detected? Last year, there was a report from Japan that, although it was illegal in an ordinary sense, apparently the unhindered entry of hard-core pornography into homes had begun there, through videos and so on. Such materials were so easy to obtain that no one really worried too much about it; among the people at large, there was no curiosity either. Father, mother, son and daughter, all apparently sit together on any day of the week and enjoy such things, in a spirit of joviality. But the question in the minds of many is how such things were possible in a socialist country like China. In the opinion of some, it is the flip side of the repression of sex that had emerged in this incident. It was simply a reaction to the extremely puritanical attitude with regard to sex in socialist countries. But many were unable to grasp how it was possible for a space for the blue film business to be created within China’s socialist economy – not just blue films, but the space for the business. But the fact of the incident cannot be denied either.

  ARE YOU A MARXIST – A FEW MORE THOUGHTS I HAD EVEN AFTER WHAT I HAD WRITTEN IN REPLY, NOW, AT THIS MOMENT

  I always keep in mind that, whenever necessary, reactionaries utilize all these half-anarchist, half-Marxist thoughts in their own way. If there’s the slightest laxity, the entire process of thinking can be used by a certain class as an opportunistic scheme, could be so used – I’m alert to that … Thinking is the greatest pleasure known to mankind – how could I forget that Brecht sahib had Galileo utter these words. Unless a very desperate drive is undertaken, nothing is possible in this country. And the establishment will indulge this desperateness so long as it can be utilized for its class interest. Associated with that is the entire viewpoint on such matters – which angle it is being shown from. I believe in carrying out a kind of ‘planned violence’ in my writing, in exactly the same sense in which Truffaut used the term.

  The writer carefully lit a cigarette. The reader held it like a chillum in his hands, took a deep puff and began coughing. And he would also write a letter about the text’s impotence.

  OUR MILKY WAY AND CROSSING ITS LIMITS

  Having had a bit to drink the previous night, I woke up late. It was about six o’clock then. Even before I could have my tea, I got the news that someone was waiting in the sitting room to meet me. I felt annoyed that I couldn’t even sip my tea in peace. I went and saw an extremely skinny-looking youth, wearing rather shabby clothes. We sat staring at each other for a few seconds. I realized he was finding it difficult to succinctly frame what he wanted to say. He had never been in such a situation before. After some time, he did open his mouth, but as if in a stupor. Need a job. A mother and several younger brothers and sisters at home, et cetera, can’t survive without a job. I became thoughtful and was about to give a suitably noncommittal reply – but I was not at all prepared for what happened next. Like a spring, the boy left his chair and shot towards my legs, he fell on his knees and threw himself at my feet. ‘Please do something … anything whatsoever … or else … or else I shall do something terrible … I’ll become bad…’ Many days have passed. I could not, or rather did not do anything about getting the boy a job. I didn’t even remember. I don’t know whether he found a job or not. Nor have I tried to find out if he’s turned bad. Not finding out is the safest. Because if I learn that he has enlisted in the satta gang or become a wagon-breaker, then, at that very moment, I would feel the jab of a thorn within me – a thorn which wouldn’t be easy to pluck out. It wasn’t possible to bother about such things in the midst of one’s myriad responsibilities and problems.

  THE FAST EXPRESS

  In the view of modern war strategists, chemical warfare is much more effective than nuclear bombs and suchlike. If one could secretly release a few grams of the bacteria that causes infectious diseases like cholera, small pox and plague in the enemy nation, the country would be reduced to a wasteland before anyone knew about it. Humans would die like insects, but all property would remain undestroyed. Everything could be taken possession of, intact, later. And the most convenient aspect is that these could be easily and secretly taken and disseminated in the enemy nation in the name of medical research. Also being invented are things which once released on crop fields would ensure that an entire people would remain mentally handicapped for decades to come – they would carry on with their normal lives and procreate, but would never raise the slightest objection to exploitation or authority. Such a time has indeed come.

  Illi-da keeps running over the wobbly Chinese wall, which had at one time been securely built by Franz Kafka, that grey-checked man. The readers of this story would have recognized Illi-da as Number One.

  PUPU’S GENERATION

  Joydev Sadhu was a student of Class 4. His father soldered broken utensils. Father, mother, five siblings and one goat lived in one room – a tin-roofed hut, rented at sixty rupees a month. A lamp had to be lit night and day. Joydev does not know about the Asian Games. Nor about satellite Rohini. Bhajan Lal is nine years old. His father makes the soles of shoes. Adjacent to his house, skirting the railway line, is a country-liquor outlet. He knows the name of Amitabh Bachchan. He knows about knives and pipe-guns very well. He knows that everyone’s courage evaporates in front of such things. When he grows up, he wants to become like Illi-da. Illi-da was a notorious wagon-breaker of this region. That’s how he had built a three-storeyed house on the corner of the road. Even the officer-in-charge of the police station minds his ways when it comes to Illi-da. He doesn’t trouble him. Illi-da’s nom de guerre is Number One. When he works for a party, then he’s Number One, when he breaks wagons he’s Illi-da. Ayesha Khatun is a student of Class 3. Her father makes leather boxes. Her brother’s work is burning pen refills. He gets fifty paise for a thousand. What will she do after completing primary school? … Does she know the name of India’s No. 1 woman? When asked, she merely stares back. She has one lipstick. Her father had bought it for her last Eid.

  VISITING INDIA, IN SIDDHESHWARITALA

  Casuarina Avenue. Under the immense trees were cars with their windows up, and there was only a mysterious darkness everywhere. Everything was enveloped in mist. Every now and then, suddenly, a tittering laughter erupted from the ground-glass windows when they were momentarily opened. Only – a few boys, bare-bodied even on this winter night, ran around collecting beer bottles thrown from cars. On one boy’s body there was only a jute sack worn like a coat. Every now and then, they rubbed their hands together to keep themselves warm. They had collected seventy or eighty beer bottles so far. As the night advanced, there would be more. ‘Look … look! That fatty has made the girl lie down on the back seat…’ It was long past eleven at night. I would like to examine once again the quotation in currency attributed to Darwin. Tonight itself if possible. Yes, the monkey – it was sitting on the German sahib’s bookshelf, and in its hand was a human skull. The monkey was gazing at it with a very thoughtful look. Reader, do you think I’m very jealous – the jealousy of non-fulfilment – what do you think, sir? I forgot to mention, some Bihari folk had even made a fire with twigs on the Victoria Memorial grounds. They sat around the fire warming themselves in the winter night.

  WHEN COLOUR IS A WARNING SIGN

  The question now arises about the realism of symbols. A hand with clenched fist, a red flag, or a grain of rice are all, in a simple sense, real and visible to our senses. Their identity as symbols is linked to their presence. But the meaning of the red flag – observing only its sensory aspect – is not confined to colour, size or lustre. The meaning can be found only when it is seen as a symbol, in relation to other symbols. The difference between a red flag and a saffron or green flag is not confined merely to the distinction of colour, it has to do with the recognized distinction of social meaning. That’s why the second identit
y, of social relation, keeps getting privileged over and above the primary identity. In this system, the red colour sometimes becomes a revolutionary party’s symbol, sometimes a warning sign, and sometimes Hanuman’s banner. And once again the ambiguities keep arising here, in the context of this elucidation, from the writer’s class situation itself. What role does the writer play here, in this elucidation – is it one of self-defence or attack?

  DOUSE WITH KEROSENE AND LIGHT THE MATCH

  A writer’s rivalry is with his successful predecessors but also with his ego, together with arrogance, laziness, bits of cunning, and an apparently brave fearfulness. He does not leave out anything, truth is concrete to him, greatly so. Every writer has his own way, if he is a conscious writer, and possibly there’s no fixed formula for this. It is dangerous to ask someone to write in a specific way because one doesn’t learn to write in this way, rather one is taught to imitate. And perhaps he does not have any powerful capability to alter the stream of life, but this sincere admission of his own limitations makes him different.

  On this earth of ours

  In this most civilized world

  Even in this year, 1983,

  Every minute, thirty children die

  Slowly, suffering,

  Merely for lack of food

  And