Why Tagore Matters?: Online Talk at National Law University, Delhi by Nibir K. Ghosh

 

Tagore Class

 

National Law University, Delhi

16^th November, 2023

Why Tagore Matters?

Nibir K. Ghosh

Warm Greetings to Prof. Prasanshu and dear students:

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to share my love for Tagore as an artist, a humanist and as a source of inspiration with my young friends in the midst of abundant greenery all around.

At the beginning of the 56-minute documentary film, Rabindranath Tagore, made by Satyajit Ray to mark the first centenary of Tagore’s birth in 1961, Ray announces in a voice over:

“On August 7, 1941, in Calcutta, a man died. His mortal remains perished, but he left behind him a heritage which no fire could consume. It was a heritage of words and music and poetry, of ideas and of ideals and it has the power to move us today and in the days to come. We, who owe him so much, salute his memory… ”

Living in an apartment a km away from the Taj, I often happily recall, the following lines from Rabindranath Tagore’s testimony to the monument of love and beauty:

 

You allowed your kingly power to vanish, Shajahan,

but your wish was to make imperishable a tear-drop of love.

Time has no pity for the human heart,

he laughs at its sad struggle to remember.
You allured him with beauty, made
him captive, and crowned the formless
death with fadeless form…
Though empires crumble to dust, and centuries

are lost in shadows, the marble still sighs to the stars,

- "I remember" (Lover’s Gift 7).

 

If Tagore (1861-1941) could compose such an exquisitely beautiful lyric to animate the “perpetual silence of stone,” one could well imagine his infinite capacity to render into eternal songs the more pulsating and vibrant voice of human life in all its manifestations.

 

When Satyajit Ray, accompanied by his mother at the age of six, first met Tagore at Santiniketan and gave him a notebook for his autograph, Tagore wrote a short poem for him in Bengali. The lines translated into English read thus: “Many a time/ Have I travelled many a mile/ to nations far away/ I've gone to see the mountains,/ the oceans I've been to view./ But I failed to notice with my two eyes wide open/ What lay not two steps from my home:/ On a sheaf of paddy grain/  A shining drop of dew.”

If my young friends here grasp the true essence of this short poem, I am sure you won’t need to look for ‘How to Succeed’ books.

 

It is no small matter that Tagore may be the only one ever to have authored the national anthems of two different countries, India and Bangladesh.

In an era where Samuel Huntington’s thesis emphasizing the “clash of civilizations” seems to be true, it is a relief to go back to Tagore and his view of religion: “My religion is a poet’s religion, and neither that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a theologian…. My religion is my life ~ it is growing with my growth ~it has never been grafted on me from outside.”

Like the Sufi saints, especially Kabir, Tagore shows his dislike for orthodox and fundamentalist views of worship marked by rituals and superstitions. He records in his Gitanjali:

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?

Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones.

He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust.

Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Tagore’s views on nationalism are universal in nature. He was a great patriot but he asserted, “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.” In a pamphlet under the title Crisis in Civilization, he tells us how to maintain the distinction between opposing Western imperialism and rejecting Western civilization. Tagore wanted to assert India’s right to be independent without denying the importance of what India could learn – freely and profitably – from other cultures.

Though Tagore himself had dropped out of school early, largely out of boredom, and had never bothered to earn a diploma, Tagore was concerned not only that there be wider opportunities for education across the country (especially in rural areas where schools were few), but also that the schools themselves be more lively and enjoyable. He wrote extensively on how schools should be made more attractive to boys and girls and thus more productive. The emphasis on his own co-educational school at Santiniketan was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence.

It is worth mentioning to the students of Law here how Tagore insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on a mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation. Only through the clear stream of reason, he told us, we can we transform the idea of freedom from “narrow domestic walls” to a space “where the Mind is without fear and the head is held high.”

 

When one finds himself/herself lost in the depth of despair, even a line like, “Jodi tor daak shune keo na aashe, tobe ekla cholo re” (When no one heeds your call for support, move on alone,” can inspire us beyond imagination.

Thank You!

Copyright Nibir K. Ghosh 16 November 2023.

 

 

Revisiting History, Ethnicity and Myth in Literature: Keynote Address & Guest of Honour Valedictory Note - Nibir K. Ghosh

 

Revisiting History, Ethnicity and Myth in Literature

International Conference

Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur

19-20 October 2023

History in the Future Tense: Revisiting Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq

 Nibir K. Ghosh

(Keynote Address)

“God, what’s the country coming to?” This exclamatory statement could very well be taken to be the lament of any ordinary Indian citizen in the contemporary context. But, amazingly, it is a statement uttered by an old man at the very outset of Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq. The scene is the yard in front of the Chief Court of Justice in Delhi. The year 1327 A.D. Seven centuries later, disillusionment still seems to be a factor which unifies the reign of Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq with that of postcolonial India caught in the vortex of endless crisis.

Girish Karnad (1938-2019), playwright, film-maker, actor and recipient of Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awards, published Tughlaq in Kannada in 1964. Karnad was inspired to choose a historical theme by Kirtinath Kurtakoti, Kannada writer and critic, who pointed out to Karnad that there were no plays based on historical themes in Kannada literature akin to Caesar and Cleopatra and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw in English. Anantha Murthy attributes the reason for Tughlaq’s appeal to the Indian audience to the fact that “it is a play of the sixties and reflects as no other play perhaps does the political mood of disillusionment which followed the Nehru era of idealism in the country” (vii-viii).

“History,” says E. H. Carr, “is a series of accepted judgments” but “facts and documents by themselves do not constitute history” (Carr 19). Tughlaq offers a veritable link between received history and its relevance in the contemporary frame of reference. Karnad’s protagonist in the play is a faithful portrait and profile of the ruler as projected in Tarikh-i-Firoz-Shahi by Zia-ud-din Barani, who figures in the play as both historian and interpreter. It is significant that Karnad’s play offers useful insights into the inter-textual connection between history, historiography and the creative mind of the artist to reveal how a historical narrative related to the society of the past can serve as a key to the understanding of the present.

Girish Karnad’s essential concern in the play revolves around Tughlaq who was not only the “most idealistic, the most intelligent king ever to come on the throne of Delhi, including the Mughals…(but) one of the greatest failure also” (in Paul 3).  The story of the meteoric rise of a monarch endowed with visionary idealism and the subsequent decline and downfall of this tremendously capable man within a span of twenty years provided Karnad with an excellent backdrop against which he could portray, project and foreground the discourse of visionary politics, the politics of demagoguery, the socio-cultural ethos governing fundamentalist ideologies and the crisis of a secular nationhood.

In his “Introduction” to Karnad’s play, U. R. Anantha Murthy rightly avers that the elusive and haunting quality of the play comes from “the ambiguities of Tughlaq’s character” related to “philosophical questions on the nature of man and the destiny of a whole kingdom which a dreamer like him controls” (Tughlaq vii-ix).

By analyzing the fateful events of Tughlaq’s times in the context of post-1960s India, Karnad presents a moving parable of political idealism gone awry whose relevance would continue in the country’s timeless existence. The manner in which Karnad has amalgamated the political significance of Tughlaq’s reign with his aesthetic and emotional response to an Emperor who felt that he alone had the correct answer shows Karnad’s ingenuity in presenting historical truth beyond the limits of an academic landscape.

Karnad makes judicious use of Barani’s account to recreate the paradoxical Tughlaq of history. Endowed with infinite powers of body and mind, Tughlaq stands out as the wisest and the most foolish Muslim ruler of India. Tughlaq’s extraordinary generosity to his subjects and his ruthlessness in getting rid of the evil doers by putting thousands to death on the slightest suspicion seems a difficult trapeze-balancing act.

In the opening scene of the play we find Muhammad Tughlaq expressing his delight and satisfaction over the manner in which justice works in his kingdom “without any consideration of might or weakness, religion or creed” (3). His dream is to perpetuate “greater justice, equality, progress and peace—not just peace but a more purposeful life” (3). Continuing in his vein of idealism he announces that to achieve this noble end he has decided to shift the capital of his empire from Delhi to Daulatabad. His rationale for such a decision is that “Daulatabad is city of the Hindus and as the capital it will symbolize the bond between Muslims and Hindus which he wishes to develop and strengthen in his kingdom” (4). Known the world over for his knowledge of philosophy and poetry, Karnad’s protagonist, like his historical prototype, experiences a thrill in imagining the creation of a new world which he intends to rule not with the power of the scepter in the style of a Muslim fundamentalist tyrant but by emulating the visionary idealism of the Greeks, Zarathustra, and the Buddha. Inspired by the Chinese use of paper currency, Tughlaq introduces copper currency in his kingdom, a scheme that ends in total failure because of his lack of far-sight in not anticipating its futility in terms of economic consequences.

Characters like Sheikh Imam-ud-din and Sheikh Shihab-ud-din and even Barani deeply appreciate how Tughlaq has done a lot of good work—built schools, hospitals, made good use of the money (31) but they tell him that he must use all that God has given—“power, learning, intelligence, talent” to “repay his debt” by spreading “Islam round the world” (20) instead of trying to become ‘another God’. As his dreams of ruling by the power of benevolence, justice and impartiality lie shattered, the philosopher king soon turns into a cruel tyrant. Unable to sustain his ideology of goodness for long, Tughlaq slides into the morass of despotism. He proudly celebrates his right to slaughter people, to be known by his beloved subjects as “Mad Muhammad” and as “Lord of Skins.” He does not hesitate in asserting that “Not words but the sword—that’s all I have to keep my faith in my mission” (66).

The naivety of Tughlaq becomes apparent in his failure to realize how even in his reign religion is inextricably linked to politics. At the beginning of the play we find the Announcer informing the crowd of people how Vishnu Prasad, a Brahmin of Shiknar, has won his suit against the Sultan himself and has received just compensation for the loss of his land which had been seized illegally by the officers of the State. In upholding the claim of Vishnu Prasad against his own authority, Tughlaq feels elated to see how he can dispense justice in his kingdom irrespective of considerations of might, religion or creed. Shortly after, we are informed that Vishnu Prasad is none else than Aziz, a low caste Muslim washerman who, masquerading as a poor Hindu Brahmin litigant, succeeds in exploiting Tughlaq’s concept of justice and impartiality. Interestingly, Aziz confesses to his friend Aazam that he chose to masquerade as a poor Hindu Brahmin simply because “a Muslim plaintiff against a Muslim king” (8) would not synchronize with the Sultan’s idea of impartial justice.

Through the various utterances of Aziz, Girish Karnad skillfully portrays the relevance of what, in contemporary parlance, we call politics and diplomacy. Aziz tells Aazam:

You have been in Delhi for so many years and you are as stupid as ever. Look at me. Only a few months in Delhi and I have discovered a whole new world. Politics.-- My dear fellow, that's where our future is --  politics. It's a beautiful world -- wealth, success, position, power -- and yet it is full of brainless people,  people with not an idea in their head. When I think of all the tricks I used in our village to pinch a few torn clothes from people -- if one uses half that intelligence here, one can get robes of power.. --  it's a fantastic World. (50)

 

In order to be successful in politics, Aziz offers the reader/audience a prudent recipe that is as relevant today as it was in the reign of Tughlaq:

A man must commit a crime at least once in his lifetime. Only then will his virtue be recognised. Listen. If you remain virtuous throughout your life no one will say a good thing about you because they won't need to.  But start stealing -- and they will say: 'What a nice boy he was but he is ruined now.' Then kill and they will beat their breasts and say: 'Heavens! He was only a petty thief all these days. Never hurt anyone. But Alas! Then rape a woman and the chorus will go into hallelujahs: He was a saint and look at him now.'

Aziz doesn’t stop at that. He logically spells out his long-term goals: “You rob a man, you run, and hide. It's so pointless. One should be able to rob a man and stay there to punish him for getting robbed. That's called ‘class’ – that’s being a real king” (58).

In Tughlaq’s rule it was possible for ordinary mortals like Aziz to exploit the politics of communalism to gain a stretch of land and to manage a post in the civil service “to ensure him a regular and adequate income” (3). In contemporary India the likes of Aziz may exploit similar situations to reach the apex in the pyramid of power. With a little astuteness it has become possible to use religion or caste in controlling the nerve centres of power. It is little surprising that even today elections in India can be won or lost on purely communal or caste lines. Money and muscle power are vital supplements for acquiring power. If one has a proven criminal record, he is bound to be respected and worshipped by his followers.

While advocating the secular cause, Tughlaq never seemed to have realized that his idealism would set him up against the Amirs, the Ulema, and the Sayyids who did not appreciate the ruler’s lack of fundamentalism in approaching the holy Koran. Tughlaq wanted to command by the power of trust and understanding but the vitiated atmosphere of a court dominated by the communalization of politics makes him ask Barani sadly: “Are all those I trust condemned to go down in history as traitors? Tell me…will my reign be nothing more than a tortured scream which will stab the night and melt away in the silence?” (43). The ruler who began with the “hopes of building a new future of India” has learnt to solve “all problems in the flash of a dagger” (42). Tughlaq’s act of shifting his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad and back again to Delhi suggests the tragic attributes of his nemesis.

Tughlaq’s attempt to propagate communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims may be an excellent recipe for the symptomatic malaise of both fourteenth century and contemporary India, but such notions of harmony were then, as are now, nothing but transcripts of utopian dreams. The seeds of disorder afflicting society on communal lines seem to have been sown centuries ago. Nurtured and nourished by mutual hatred and violence, these seeds of dissent ultimately led to the partition of the subcontinent, the after-effects of which can be witnessed at regular intervals, be it a scene of a riot or an India-Pakistan match in a stadium.

The play also tells us that the introduction of religion into politics to secure power over the masses by arousing their political consciousness appears to have become a dominating factor in the game of power politics. The contemporaneity of Karnad’s play emerges from his identification of the variables and the constants which have controlled the power equation ironically in the world’s largest democracy. Through a series of events Karnad shows how power, once rooted, is not easily shaken. Once a demagogue fails in transforming power into authority, the waning consent of the governed compels the demagogue to assume the role of a cruel and relentless despot. Tughlaq takes recourse to methods of coercion to legitimize the power that he wields.

Tughlaq emerges as a shrewd politician who has learnt the art of transforming every adverse situation to his advantage. He invites the charismatic religious leader Imam-ud-din to address a public meeting and gives him the freedom of denouncing the policies of Tughlaq in public. The act may appear to exemplify Tughlaq’s courage and integrity in allowing freedom of expression to prevail in his kingdom. This façade of impartiality and supreme objectivity comes to the fore when we learn in the play that his soldiers have been sent from door to door to prevent them from attending the said meeting.

Tughlaq’s tragic tale is symptomatic of the inherited complex problems of Indian society. Time and again it has been proved that mere idealism, unrelated to the understanding of the times, cannot by itself help in reaching visionary heights. The ever-increasing criminalization of politics characterized by the power of might over right is indicative of the failure of ideals that the freedom fighters had envisaged for the country. The play also goes on to show how hard measures imperative to the progress of the nation can never find acceptance with either the players of the power game or with the common populace. Rampant corruption has made the ideals of honesty anachronistic. In a society poised between secular and fundamentalist ideologies, the parameters of Tughlaq’s world bear close resemblance to the discourse of the Indian political and culture experience despite there being essential differences between the characteristic features of the fourteenth century and that of modern India.

In conclusion, it may be accepted that Karnad’s powerful play rightly reminds us of what George Santayana warned us about in 1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Thank You!

Revisiting History, Ethnicity and Myth in Literature

Nibir K. Ghosh

Guest of Honour Valedictory Note

 History

In a Paris Review interview Chinua Achebe referred to an old African proverb that says, “Until the lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.” In the same interview, Achebe said that storytelling "is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions."

“The study of history is a study of causes,” says E. H. Carr in his iconic book What is History and adds that the great historian or the great thinker “is the one who asks the question ‘Why?’ about new things or in new contexts.” I am sure most of us are familiar with concepts like ‘Erasure’, ‘Bleaching’ or ‘whitening’ of History that form the lexicon of contemporary discourse. It is necessary to revisit History and ask questions rather than take things, events and opinions for granted.

Ethnicity

For substantiating the contemporary significance of ethnicity, I would like to share two instances. One relates to the event in which a French policeman shot and killed Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy at a traffic checkpoint in Nantarre, a suburb of Paris resulting in widespread riots in France and other countries. According to the testimony of Nahel’s beloved mother, the police officer who shot him "saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life." The Nahel  incident brings to our mind a similar event in Minneapolis, Minnesota where George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer, on 25 May 2020. In this context of ethnicity issues, the recent saga of Manipur burning is again no exception.

 Myth

Writers have always been fascinated by the remoteness, mystery and heroism of myths. Carl Gustav Jung has stated that the materials of myths lie in the collective unconscious of the race. Inspired by the myth embedded in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, written 2500 years ago, Sigmund Freud revolutionised human thought by coining what is now universally known as the Oedipus complex.

Similarly, Prometheus the Greek god, who was chained to a rock for helping mankind with fire, has been the source of inspiration for numerous works of immortal fame. A case in point is Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer that is based on the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb,” entitled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer jointly authored by Kai Baird and Martin J. Sherwin in 2005.

 Literature

 “An unexamined life is not worth living” said Socrates at his trial, a task for which he was punished to die by drinking the hemlock. I believe that nothing helps us examine life as literature does. Therefore, as writers, academics, scholars and researchers it is incumbent upon each one of us to meaningfully apply ourselves to take forward the ideas and approaches provided by this successful international conference. To those who doubt the efficacy of literature in transforming lives at a critical time like the one we live in, I would like to share a statement by Salman Rushdie:

“A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel can’t defuse a bomb. But we are not helpless. We can sing the truth and name the liars.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Re-Markings Vol. 22 No. 2 September 2023 Announcements: Call for Papers & Invitation to Share

 

Re-Markings Vol. 22 No. 2 September 2023  

Editorial

On 25 August 1944, while the Allied forces were entering the French territory to liberate France from German occupation during World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered his generals occupying the French capital to reduce the city of Paris to a pile of ruins before they departed. He asked in authoritative desperation "Brennt Paris?" ("Is Paris Burning?"). The words in Hitler’s anxiety-ridden question provided the title to the 1965 best seller Is Paris Burning written by acclaimed journalists and writers, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. A year later in 1966 came the film by the same name directed by René Clément.

With all the satanic powers that Hitler had at his command – a well-knit, hard-working population of 70,000,000 who stood ideologically inspired, physically trained, and materially equipped for the supreme business of making war and causing the genocide of millions of Jews – he could not have the privilege of seeing the spectacle of Paris burning.

Ironically, what the tyrannous German dictator could not attain in the August of 1944 became a gruesome reality on 27 June 2023 when a French policeman shot and killed Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy at a traffic checkpoint in Nantarre, a suburb of Paris. Nahel, of Moroccan and Algerian descent and the only child of his mother, was a "kid who used rugby to get by"…and who “was someone who had the will to fit in socially and professionally, not some kid who dealt in drugs or got fun out of juvenile crime" according to Jeff Puech, president of the Ovale Citoyen group in France. He was remembered as a kind, helpful child who had never raised a hand to anyone and was never violent. According to the testimony of his beloved mother, the police officer who shot him "saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life." The killing of Nahel for not stopping at the checkpoint while driving his Mercedes provoked unprecedented violence resulting in vandalization, torching of government property and vehicles, rioting and destruction. Paris indeed was burning and so were many other towns caught in the flare of outrage that spilled onto the streets of France against organized officialdom.

For those who have known France as the land that venerates in its constitution and practice the avowed ideals of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” the Nahel incident brings to the fore once again the ambivalence of power equations in dem-ocracies by reminding us of a similar event in Minneapolis, Minnesota where George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer, on 25 May 2020. Besides the scenes of rioting, loot and arson, witnessed in many cities of the U.S., Floyd’s death led to widespread international protests in various countries including France.

In what is believed to be the world’s most powerful democracy, the Statue of Liberty stands majestically welcoming immigrants from all parts of the globe to try their fortune in the United States of America. However, when we see Frederick Douglas in his 1852 speech asking, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July” and Ralph Ellison describing in his 1951 novel, Invisible Man, the Statue of Liberty “lost in the fog,” we can visualize how democratic principles and democratic practices are constantly at variance.

Likewise, we are reminded of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian girl of Kurdish origin, in police custody on 16 September 2022. The self-proclaimed guardians of morality found her guilty of violating the sacred rules requiring women to cover their hair when in public. The death of Mahsa led to massive protests and rioting that saw Iran burning for months.

Events related to Nahel M., Floyd George, and Mahisa Amini have one thing in common: they were all victims of systemic police brutality. It is quite likely that the practitioners of power in unform perceived a threat to their existence when they came across an Arab face, or a man with black skin, or the hair of a young girl uncovered with a scarf. Even in professed democracies it is not unusual to see law-enforcing agencies or institutions place a curb on civil liberties for the suppression of dissent in any form. In this context, I find it pertinent to mention a remark made by Aung San Suu Kyi, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, in her essay entitled “Freedom from Fear” (1990): “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Against the backdrop of incidents and situations that reveal the state of endangered freedom and civil liberties, it is appropriate to place in perspective the current edition of Re-Markings that showcases issues and concerns bordering on oppression, discrimination and exploitation on grounds of nation, class, race, caste, gender, colour, creed, religion, language etc. The global outreach of the scholarly contributions in the volume brings together the efforts of historians, writers, academics and scholars to question and challenge the status quo created by centres of power to keep those on the margins in their ‘place’. While burning cities have become emblematic of the collective rage of suppressed dissent against authoritarian approaches to the basic needs of common people, be it in France, U.S., Iran or Manipur, we cannot insensitively turn our heads away and remain unconcerned.

When we get passionately involved in what and how we write, we are automatically transformed from mere spectators to participants in better causes. George Orwell had pointed out: “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” It is, therefore, incumbent upon each one of us to think for ourselves rather than allow others to do our part of the thinking.

Nibir K. Ghosh

Chief Editor

CONTENTS

 

Viewpoints from California - Jonah Raskin     - Walt Whitman & T. S. Eliot: A Personal Engagement / 7 The U.S. Supreme Court: A Primer / 10

Reconstructing and Demythologizing America’s Story: An Interview with Professor Kermit Roosevelt III on The Nation That Never Was - Robin Lindley / 13

Not Writing in the Mother Tongue - Miho Kinnas / 25

Krishna Baldev Vaid’s Hindi Ibārat and My Malayalam Pāṭhaṁ - K. Narayana Chandran / 31

 South Asia as a Literary Category - Anisur Rahman / 42

Blended Learning in Educational Technology: Challenges and Opportunities – India’s Perspective - Shanker Ashish Dutt / 47

Melody of the Blues and the American Racial Dilemma:  August Wilson’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Nibir K. Ghosh / 54

 The Cracked Mirror: An Examination of  A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams - Shernavaz Buhariwala / 67

Re-telling (her) Stories: Sorties, Texts and - Contexts from Northeast India  Sukalpa Bhattacharjee / 75

R. K. Narayan’s The Dark Room: A Story of Lost Opportunities -Yashu Rai / 89

Ecology, Spirituality and Sankaradeva - Nityananda Pattanayak / 96

 Decolonising the Novel: A Study of Wilson Harris’ The Palace of the Peacock - Melissa Helen / 103

 Arundhati Roy’s Azadi and My India - Pallavi Sharma Goyal / 110

 Dalit Feminism and Meena Kandasamy’s Writings - Ruchi Singh / 117

 Debt, an Eternal Curse in Kota Neelima’s Shoes of the Dead - Vikram Singh & Reshma Devi / 125

Single Indian Women as the Other in Eunice de Souza’s Novels: Dangerlok and Dev & Simran - Barsha Sahoo / 129  

The Ontological Perspective of “Self” in Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence - Rajeev Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty / 136

Women and War: Redefining Historical Discourse in Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomaly Face of War - Amandeep Kaur / 143

Modes of Representation in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh - Paramba Dadhich / 151

The Final Confession (Short Story) - Sin Keong Tong / 157

Announcements / 160

Announcements

Call for Papers

Scholarly contributions are invited from members of Re-Markings for a proposed Special Number/Section on the theme “Transforming Lives in an Age of Artificial Intelligence: Orientations and Challenges.” Papers may address any of the following areas:

1.     Literature-Technology Interface.

2.     The Digital Divide.

3.     ChatGPT and Human Communication.

4.     Where do we go from here?

5.     Impact of artificial intelligence on upward mobility.

6.     Is Orwellian ‘Big Brother’ watching us?

7.     Emerging Utopian and Dystopian views of change.

8.     Social Media: Boon or Bane?

9.     Short films and OTT platforms.

10.  Any other aspect related to the basic theme.

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of 150 words along with contact details and professional affiliation to remarkings@hotmail.com by 20 September, 2023. Authors of selected entries will be notified by 10 October, 2023. Thereafter, the complete paper (2000-2500 words in MS Word format, MLA Style 9^th edition) will be required by 15 November, 2023.

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Invitation to share

Re-Markings’ readers and contributors are welcome to share their unique academic/professional achievements on the Panorama section of the journal website www.re-markings.com by sending details of the same with pictures/images to the Chief Editor at ghoshnk@hotmail.com

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FREEDOM FROM FEAR: LITERATURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS - KEYNOTE ADDRESS By NIBIR K. GHOSH International Multidisciplinary Conference on Posthumanism, Cybernetics and Human Rights

 

Jagat Guru Nanak Dev Punjab State Open University Patiala

International Multidisciplinary Conference on

Posthumanism, Cybernetics and Human Rights

25-26 July 2023 

 

FREEDOM FROM FEAR: LITERATURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Nibir K. Ghosh

 

Dr. Karamjeet Singh, Hon’ble VC, Dignitaries of the University, Dr. Navleen Multani, distinguished guests, worthy participants, students, friends, ladies and gentlemen:

I deem it a pleasure to greet you all from the city of the Taj at the inaugural session of this two-day international conference on a topic of supreme contemporary relevance. I am thankful to Dr. Karamjeet Singh and his team for the invitation to contribute to this conference as a Keynote speaker. Since a Keynote speech is not likely to be followed by question-answer session, I can easily feel reassured that no one would take the trouble of listening to me. 

Friends, Today I wish to share with you a collage of impressions based on my experiences as a passionate lover of literature on the topic “Freedom from Fear: Literature and Human Rights.” But before I talk about ‘Freedom from Fear’, I find it imperative to share my anxiety and dread about the impact of apocalyptic high-sounding terms like Posthumanism and Cybernetics on the current academia and general intellectual perception. Rather than take up your valuable time defining such terminology, I would prefer to give two examples of human evolution in posthuman and cybernetics times.

An astronomer once declared in a scientific meeting: “To an astronomer man is nothing more than an insignificant dot in the infinite universe’. Einstein, who was present at the meeting, is reported to have observed: ‘I have often felt that, but then I realize that the insignificant dot, who is man, is also the astronomer.”

 

In the Zoo at Lusaka, Zambia, there is a cage where the notice reads “The world’s most dangerous animal.” Inside the cage there is no animal but a mirror where you see yourself.

In the context of the above instances, I wish to ask my young friends present here, “what happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become vectors?” It is imperative that in answering this question we are bound to re-think about what is truly ‘human’ about human rights.

Freedom from Fear

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights, remarked Dag Hammarskjold, the former secretary general of the UNO.

After the creation of the United Nations, the international community strongly felt that the human rights to life, dignity, integrity, and to other necessary things for a meaningful survival needed to be preserved and propagated by rule of law. The U.N.'s blue flag came forth as a banner of hope. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions freedom more than twenty times. Human rights are praised more than ever -- and violated as much as ever.

Let me quickly take you to an excursion around some recent happenings. Let us begin with Paris, the capital of the nation that is known as the cradle of democracy where ideals like “liberty, equality and fraternity” resonate not merely as principles of governance but as a way of life.

On 27 June 2023, i.e. less than a month ago, a French police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old named Nahel.  His death led to widespread protests that saw many parts of the country in flames. Nahel’s mother said that the police officer who pulled the trigger "saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life." On 16 September 2022, in Iran, 22-year old Mahsa Amini, was killed in police custody for not covering her head with a hijab. Iran burned as hundreds of girls and women lost their lives protesting against the self-proclaimed guardians of morality. We may not have forgotten the case of George Floyd, the Black man murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 25 May 2020. And, as we engage ourselves in deliberations on Human rights, haunting us is the recent video of two women who were paraded naked and raped in Manipur.

These episodes remind us of what Alfred Hitchcock said about fear: 

“Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.”

“Apna Apna Bhagya”

When we discuss the issue of Freedom from fear it may not be restricted to abuse of human rights by those in power. In fact, it could be related to something less complicated than that. I would like to share excerpts from “Apna Apna Bhagya” by Jainendra Kumar Jain.

तीन गज की दूरी से दीख पड़ा, एक लड़का सिर के बड़े-बड़े बालों को खुजलाता चला आ रहा है. नंगे पैर है, नंगा सिर. एक मैली-सी कमीज़ लटकाए है. पैर उसके न जाने कहां पड़ रहे हैं, और वह न जाने कहां जा रहा है- कहां जाना चाहता है. उसके कदमों में जैसे कोई न अगला है, न पिछला है, न दायां है, न बायां है.

कोई दस बरस का होगा. गोरे रंग का है, पर मैल से काला पड़ गया है. आंखें अच्छी बड़ी पर रूखी हैं. माथा जैसे अभी से झुर्रियां खा गया है. वह हमें न देख पाया. वह जैसे कुछ भी नहीं देख रहा था. न नीचे की धरती, न ऊपर चारों तरफ फैला हुआ कुहरा, न सामने का तालाब और न बाकी दुनिया. वह बस, अपने विकट वर्तमान को देख रहा था.

मित्र ने आवाज दी- “ए!”

उसने जैसे जागकर देखा और पास आ गया.

“तू कहां जा रहा है?”

उसने अपनी सूनी आंखें फाड़ दीं.

“दुनिया सो गई, तू ही क्यों घूम रहा है?”

बालक मौन-मूक, फिर भी बोलता हुआ चेहरा लेकर खड़ा रहा.

“कहां सोएगा?”

“यहीं कहीं.”

“कल कहां सोया था?”

“दुकान पर.”

“आज वहां क्यों नहीं?”

“नौकरी से हटा दिया.”

“क्या नौकरी थी?”

“सब काम. एक रुपया और जूठा खाना!”

“फिर नौकरी करेगा?”

“हां.”

“बाहर चलेगा?”

“हां.”

“आज क्या खाना खाया?”

“कुछ नहीं.”

“अब खाना मिलेगा?”

“नहीं मिलेगा!”

“यों ही सो जाएगा?”

“हां.”

“कहां.”

“यहीं कहीं.”

“इन्हीं कपड़ों में?”

बालक फिर आंखों से बोलकर मूक खड़ा रहा. आंखें मानो बोलती थीं- यह भी कैसा मूर्ख प्रश्न!

“माँ-बाप हैं?”

“हैं.”

“कहां?”

“पन्द्रह कोस दूर गाँव में.”

“तू भाग आया?”

“हां!”

“क्यों?”

“मेरे कई छोटे भाई-बहिन हैं- सो भाग आया वहां काम नहीं, रोटी नहीं. बाप भूखा रहता था और मारता था, माँ भूखी रहती थी और रोती थी. सो भाग आया. एक साथी और था. उसी गाँव का. मुझसे बड़ा था. दोनों साथ यहां आए. वह अब नहीं हैं.

“कहां गया?”

“मर गया.”

“मर गया?”

“हां, साहब ने मारा, मर गया.”

 

Here are the concluding lines from the story:

 

मोटर में सवार होते ही यह समाचार मिली कि पिछली रात, एक पहाड़ी बालक सड़क के किनारे, पेड़के नीचे, ठिठुरकर मर गया! मरने के लिए उसे वही जगह, वही दस बरस की उम्र और वही काले चीथड़ों की कमीज मिली।

 

आदमियों की दुनिया ने बस यही उपहार उसके पास छोड़ा था।

 

पर बताने वाले ने बताया कि गरीब के मुँह पर, छाती मुठ्ठी और पैरों पर बरफ की हलकी-सी चादर चिपक गई थी। मानो दुनिया की बेहयाई ढ़कने के लिए प्रकृति ने शव के लिए सफेद और ठण्डे कफ़न का प्रबंध कर दिया था।

 

सब सूना और सोचा, अपना-अपना भाग्य।

 

This story written in 1931 shows the face of poverty and misery under an alien rule. 92 years later, in 2023, as we celebrate the Amritotsav of our Independence, we cannot say with any certainty that the scene has changed much. However, it is significant to point out the impact this simple story has in sensitizing us to the poverty and misery of the millions of such children who inhabit this great land. Though I first read this unforgettable story as a child in school, I can never forget the impact it left on me. This is the power of literature.

 

It is not insignificant that Mr. Kailash Satyarthi mentions in his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance speech how in the foothills of the Himalayas, he met a small, skinny boy who asked him: "Is the world so poor that it cannot give me a toy and a book, instead of forcing me to take a tool or gun?"

 

Once I was invited to talk to the English PG students at a premium women’s college in Hyderabad. The topic that was given to me was Women Empowerment. Before turning to the theme, I asked the audience comprising 125+girls and women teachers how many among them would still feel the truth expressed in the line from the famous song, “Abke janam mohe bitiya na kijo…ro bhi na paye aisi gudiya na kijo.” I was amazed to see all the hands rise up except of just two students. I immediately understood the challenges are a part of a woman’s destiny despite all the changes we see around us.

I would also like to share the travails of a woman under the brutal Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania:

“One day, on the way to the hairdresser, somebody suddenly grabbed me by the arm: it was a policeman who took me to the basement of a nearby block of flats, where three men lay in wait for me. The one who seemed to be the boss accused me, amongst others, of being a prostitute of Arab students and that I was doing it to be paid for in kind for cosmetics (under communism beauty products considered inessential were absent from shops). I answered that I knew no Arab students to which he retorted that if he wanted to he could find twenty Arab students to testify against me. Then the slender policeman opened the door to let me out and threw my ID card on the ground. As I bent he kicked me hard in the back: I fell face down on the grass, behind some bushes.”

This woman who underwent ceaseless persecution and torture for refusing to conform to the government ideology and diktat, is none other than Herta Müller, the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. In The Land of Green Plums Herta Müller, writes: 

“I sang without hearing my voice. I fell from a fear full of doubt into a fear full of absolute certainty. I could sing the way water sings. Maybe the tune came from my singing grandmother’s dementia. Perhaps I knew tunes she lost when she lost her reason. Perhaps things that lay fallow in her brain had to pass to my lips.”

This is what literature can do and what Artificial Intelligence and all the posthuman creations can’t.

It was Socrates in ancient Greece who taught us that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” In modern times, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reiterated that “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It is literature that helps us in examining the reasons we live for and the sense and meaning that we can impart to our lives. How right is George Orwell when he says, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

To me the success of this great conference lies not to what extent it will enhance your API scores but in how you approach your own human instincts to work for creating a space where everyone, without discrimination in any form, can work together, without fear, for the common good characterized by tolerance, respect for freedom, compassion and progressive democracy.

You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a Buddhist tale:

A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?" To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire." He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?" The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit."

Let us, then, do our bit, like the tiny bird in the fable, and show with compassion what Wordsworth pointed out in “Tintern Abbey”: “that best portion of a good man's life,/ His little, nameless, unremembered, acts/ Of kindness and of love.”

While deliberating on the theme of the Conference, I am optimistic that you will not miss the value of the “little, nameless, unremembered, acts/ Of kindness and of love” that will help you become a truly good, compassionate and fearless human being.

With these words, I wish you and the conference all success!

Valedictory Session Pictures

 

Thank You!