History | ইতিহাস

In the 1880s, John Robert Seeley pompously announced that “India is... only a geographical expression and does not make the territory of a nation” while John Strachey declared with equal contempt that “there never was an India… no Indian nation, no people of India”. Like other British imperialist commentators, they were both obviously underestimating the inner strength of a civilisation that had arisen over millennia of coexistence, compromise and consensus.

সরকারি মতে আজ মহাত্মা গাঁধীর জন্মের সার্ধশতবর্ষের উদ্‌যাপনের সমাপ্তি। এই কোভিড সংক্রমণের মাঝেও বেশ ঘটা করে উৎসব অনুষ্ঠান নিশ্চই হবে, অন্তত টিভির পর্দার জন্য। প্রচুর অর্থের বিনিময়ে যে সব কার্যক্রম ভারত সরকার গত দু’বছর ধরে কার্যকরী করলেন, সেইগুলি কতটুকু সফল হয়েছে আর সাধারণ মানুষকে গান্ধীর ভাবধারার প্রতি আকর্ষিত করেছে, তা বিচার করে কোনো লাভ নেই, শোনার লোকের অভাবে। মূর্তি স্থাপনেরও খুব একটা সুযোগ নেই, কেননা বিগত ৭২ বছরে এমন কোনো শহর বা গঞ্জ বাকি নেই, যেখানে গান্ধীকে নিয়ে ভাস্কর্যের নিদর্শন দেখা যায় না। রাস্তার নামকরণ আমাদের একটা জাতীয় বদ্ধসংস্কার, কিন্তু এ ব্যাপারেও খুব একটা অবকাশ নেই — আমরা তো কত যুগ আগেই বিভিন্ন রাজ্যে প্রধান সড়কের নাম এম জি রোড করে ফেলেছি।

As the 150th birth anniversary celebrations end and the Mahatma returns to his confined habitat of museums, a fact worth noticing is the visible turn — we still cannot call it a turnaround— in the attitude of the Hindu Right to the man they hounded to death.'

The annual festive worship of Durgā is so comfortably settled in the Bengali imagination that her apparent anomalies and contradictions are hardly examined. The first issue is that popular demand in Bengal mandates that she has to be seen with her four 'children' — which is most unlike other parts of India. The second is derived from this as these four `children' appear quite disinterested in Durgā's ferocious battle with Mahiṣāsura, nor do they play any role in it. The third anomaly lies in the fact that Durgā in Bengal appears resplendent in her best dress with a lot of jewellery, even as she is engaged in a mortal combat.

As in the recent past, on this Independence Day too, we shall hear a lot of chest-thumping from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, along with a call to immerse ourselves in patriotic passion. But when the present prime minister of India recalls the role of our immortal martyrs of the freedom struggle, will he really tell us the whole truth about this phase? No: he will not make the mistake of mentioning that the organisation that commands and inspires his political party did not participate in the struggle for independence, and that it actively opposed it at times.

এই স্বাধীনতা দিবসেও আমরা নিশ্চয় দিল্লির লালকেল্লা থেকে প্রচুর ছাতি ফোলানো গর্বের কথা শুনব আর জাতিপ্রেমের ফোয়ারার আবেগে নিজেদের ভাসিয়ে দেওয়ার বাণীও পাব। কিন্তু যখন ভারতের বর্তমান প্রধানমন্ত্রী স্বাধীনতা সংগ্রামের অমর শহিদদের স্মরণ করবেন, তিনি কি এই ইতিহাসের সম্পূর্ণ সত্য ঘটনাগুলি বলবেন? তিনি ভুলেও আমাদের বলবেন না যে, তাঁর দলের নিয়ন্ত্রণকারী ও প্রেরণাদায়ক সংগঠন ওই সংগ্রামে অংশগ্রহণ তো করেনি বটেই, উপরন্তু কয়েক স্থানে বাধাও দিয়েছে? রাষ্ট্রীয় স্বয়ংসেবক সঙ্ঘ বা আরএসএস-এর ভূমিকা বুঝতে গেলে তার দ্বিতীয় সরসঙ্ঘ-চালক এম এস গোলওয়ালকরের প্রবন্ধ ‘এক বীর্যবান জাতীয়তার দিকে’ পড়তে হবে। সেখানে তিনি স্পষ্ট ভাষায় বলেছেন, ইংরেজ রাজশক্তির বিরুদ্ধে সরাসরি আন্দোলন করাকে তাঁরা জাতীয়তাবাদ বলে মনে করেন না।

No, we will not discuss Vikas Dubey. But we need to revisit occasionally that very shadowy zone where the state assumes the power to liquidate certain citizens. We know that this is one of the three unique traits that distinguish the state from all other organisations, including those more prosperous or powerful. These are the legitimate right to impose taxes (everyone else ‘charges’ people); the inherent right to requisition men, materials, places and buildings (as during elections or wars); and the third is its basic right to kill. It thus declares all other killings are homicides and prosecutes the perpetrators, leading occasionally to capital punishment, after due trial and the process of law.

Despite considerable material progress, the world still views India as an ancient land steeped in spirituality, with a culture that stretches back to a hoary, unfathomable past. Indians, too, subscribe to this glorification of its timelessness and have been encouraged, especially in the last few years, to take an obsessive pride in this tryst with eternity. Thus, we can hardly be faulted in subscribing to very marketable propositions, like the one that claims our classical dance forms represent an unbroken tradition for several millennia and all of them go back to the venerable sage, Bharata Muni, who composed Natyashastra.

It would not be correct to view the recent communal riots in Delhi that claimed 50 lives as a failure of the government of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. It is actually a major victory of this regime and the whole idea was to demonstrate what this government is capable of inflicting on minorities and its other opponents. Let us see if we can pick up the many messages that Modi and Shah have given us through this riot.

It is needless to remind ourselves that Kolkata once famous for its large number of palatial buildings, which earned it the sobriquet: “the City of Palaces”. At present, however, except the Marble Palace, Jorasanko Thakurbari and a handful of other such well-maintained ones, the rest are all gone or are in a pitiable state of disrepair.

I congratulate the Iran Society of Kolkata for stepping into its 75th year — which is no mean achievement. I also compliment the Iran Society for conducting a 3-day International Seminar on the subject: ‘Persian Heritage of Bengal’. It is, indeed, the most appropriate occasion for deliberating on this topic, as Bengal is certainly a major beneficiary from its six centuries of association with Persian language and culture.

History, we are told, is invariably written by victors. We are not certain whether this is what prompted Amit Shah, undoubtedly the second most powerful person in India, to declare that “there is a need to rewrite the Indian history from India’s point of view”. Shah claims that had V.D. Savarkar, the founding father of ‘the Hindu nation’ not described the events of 1857 as the ‘Indian War of Independence’, Indians would still be calling it by the British term, ‘Sepoy Mutiny’.

I thank this prestigious institution, the National Centre for the Performing Arts of Mumbai for giving me this unique honour of delivering the first Jamshed Bhabha Memorial Lecture. Had it not been for the great visionary, this very ground that houses our auditorium and the extraordinary Centre, would still be many feet under the sea. His perseverance and leadership is best exemplified in the amazing reconstruction of his dream theatre, after it was destroyed by fire. I salute both the Bhabha brothers and the Tata family for their interest and munificence — a remarkable quality that distinguishes the Parsee community of India.

India, as you know, is a multi ethnic, multi lingual, multi religious country which is vast and populous. Of the 1 billion 300 million people in India today, some 170 million are Muslims, which is the second largest Muslim population in any country of the world. Though Muslims are in a minority, they have lived in peace with Hindus and other religions for centuries.

Right from the Upanishadic period, India has an age - old culture of questioning existing beliefs, texts, systems and public authorities both the religious and the secular or political . We have briefly mentioned Gautam Buddha in this regard. But the hard fact is that this practice had fallen into utter disuse by the late medieval and early modern periods. This is when Rammohun arrived.

The topic which I have chosen to speak today seeks to bridge, to some extent, the ever-increasing gulf between the social sciences and the physical sciences. As academic disciplines improve their coverage and become more organised, more systematic and reach higher levels of understanding of reality in their own different ways, they become more and more exclusive. They begin to speak in languages that arise out of the requirement of their own disciplines without realising that their lexicon is hardly understood by anyone else who is not a part of their limited domain.

When the former prime minister, who is known for his strict economy with words, writes a long letter – one of his rare ones – to his rather over-articulate successor, one assumes that the matter must be important. The letter I refer to is dated August 24, 2018, in which Manmohan Singh expresses deep concern at the move, initiated obviously at Narendra Modi’s behest, to change the character of the Nehru Museum Memorial and Library (NMML) from a memorial to Jawaharlal Nehru to one for “all PMs”.

During Durga Puja, the indomitable spirit and irrepressible energies of Bengalis literally burst forth, holding normal life to ransom. The spirit of festivity surrounds us as hundreds and thousands of gaily-decorated pandals – those magnificent creations made of bamboo, cloth, plywood and imagination – come up everywhere. They house the mammoth but exquisitely sculpted figures of Durga and her family, and the whole neighbourhood is transformed into a wonderland of lights, animation and music that the organisers conjure.

There are literally hundreds of books on the enchanting city of Kolkata—its history, its music, its streets, its people, its festivals and so on. But it is difficult to find a comprehensive volume on all the important places of worship, even with a lot of effort. Mala Mukherjee and Jael Silliman have filled this gap by bringing in vivid colours all the interesting places of worship of different communities that lend Kolkata its unique vibrancy and zest for life.

Museums began in the 18th century as a very European manner of displaying the pomp and glory of kings and emperors, as an extension of the same extravagance with which they built their grand palaces and luxuriant gardens. They were meant to overawe the visitor rather than to welcome him. The sheer wealth of the great empires like the Austro Hungarian, the Ottoman, the French or even the British spurred the need to display the artefacts and antiquities that the empires had collected, acquired or simply looted from other parts of the world.