A journey with books from a
public library in Rampura Phul in Bathinda district of Punjab to JNU in Delhi
to Trinidad and Tobago.
29
Jun 2022
When
did I start reading books in life, apart from course books? In my childhood, I
used to go to a public library and another open kind of newspaper reading place
in my hometown, Rampura Phul, in Bathinda district of Punjab. I used to read
Hindi and Punjabi children’s magazines like 'Chandamama', 'Bal
Sandesh' or Hindi/Punjabi newspapers and the children’s sections.
After matriculating, I was not able to join any college, and went to stay at my
elder sister's place in Abohar in Ferozepur district.
Abohar,
incidentally, was a much better-known town before 1947. Eminent Hindi writers
and national leaders during the freedom struggle used to visit Sahitya Sadan
there. My brother-in-law arranged for me to work as a trainee worker in Bhiwani
cotton mills. I tried for a month or so but could not adjust with factory work.
But during my stay in Abohar in 1962 or so, I got into the habit of reading spy
or jasoosi novels in Hindi. There was a shop in Abohar, which
stored hundreds of such novels and charged one anna (6 paise today) per day for
reading. Sometimes I used to read more than one novel a day. Many of these were
monthly publications like 'Jassosi duniya' etc.
After
I returned to Rampura Phul, I started helping my father in his shop. I started
going to the library again and sometimes browsed English papers, mainly 'The
Tribune', particularly film advertisements or sports pages, since I used to
listen to cricket commentaries on the radio. Names of Salim Durrani, Chandu
Borde, Vijay Manjrekar, Polly Umrigar, Bapu Nadkarni from India and Gary
Sobers, Gibbs, Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai etc from West Indies, had etched in my
mind.
When
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964, the shop was closed for two days, one
on his death day and another when his ashes were immersed. I think at that time
I became a member of the public library and the first book I issued out of the
two issued at that time was Premchand's novel Godaan. Perhaps
Premchand’s autobiographical story 'Mera Jivan' in school
curricula made a deep impact on my adolescent mind. I read the novel in a
single day or maybe two days, but that set my standards for literary reading. I
tried to read Punjabi novels by Nanak Singh and Jaswant Kanwal, but could not
continue, as novels in Hindi by Premchand and other writers gave me more
aesthetic pleasure than Punjabi novels.
The
public library in Rampura Phul was established during the freedom struggle and
has a rich collection in Hindi, Urdu, English and Punjabi. I tried reading the
Urdu copy of 'Godan' with my father, who was middle pass those days
and was not allowed by my grandfather to accept a schoolteacher’s job in 1933
at Rs 18 a month. My father could not be attuned to literature, but continued
reading his favourite Urdu daily, perhaps 'Hind Samachar'. Since
that day, my reading has never stopped and that helped me become what I am
today.
I
started buying books other than course books in the late 60s, when I became a
schoolteacher in 1967. I became a member of Hind Pocket Books. Those days in Re
1 one got good paperbacks. I translated one of these books in Punjabi from
Hindi in my early phase of writing—it was Manmathnath Gupt's 'Bharat Ke
Krantikari', sketches of 16 or 18 revolutionaries. It was serialised by
Ghadarite Baba Gurmukh Singh who edited 'Desh Bhagat Yaadan' from
Desh Bhagat Yaadgar Hall Jalandhar. Some pieces were published in 'Preetlari', Aarsee'
journals also.
Unfortunately,
in the police raids in the 1970s to suppress the Naxalite movement, even the
Ghadar Party memorial could not preserve its records and those issues of Desh
Bhagat Yadan, edited by such legendary Ghadarite Gurmukh Singh Lalton, were
lost. Perhaps out of fear, I did not preserve those issues, and only five or of
those sketches are with me that were published in some literary or government
journals.
While
doing M.A. in Hindi and Punjabi, I bought lots of books. During my
incarceration in Bathinda jail for seven months during the Emergency of
1975-77, the best part was reading huge novels like those of Sarat Chandra. My
weekly supply of books came from the public library in Rampura Phul.
Bulk
buying of books started when I became a research scholar in Jawaharlal Nehru
University (JNU) in 1977 and started getting a fellowship. Every hostel room in
JNU has a bookshelf and not having books on the shelf meant being a lesser
being in that culture. I always spent more than what I received as contingency grant
for purchasing books. It gave immense pleasure to own a book which was
considered important, whether literature or any other discipline. Faculty
members and JNU students would stand at Geeta Book Shop in the Kamal Complex
market every evening to look for new titles and join the race to buy first.
I
had so many books in my collection that when I left for Bombay in 1982 to join
as Hindi officer, I left a big collection in my room with my friend Shashi
Bhushan Upadhyaya (now Professor in History at IGNOU, New Delhi) and one of the
painful chapters of my life is that many of these books were lost when JNU was
closed sine die in 1983 and Shashi was one among arrested and later rusticated.
Students were not able to preserve their precious books, because hostels were
vacated in a very rough manner.
I
continued buying books after I joined the job. It became a habit, a
continuation of the Geeta Book Shop culture. But conditions changed after 1985,
when I joined as lecturer in Hindi at Punjabi University, Patiala. The purchase
of books increased, adding Punjabi books to my collection apart from Hindi and
English. But, after a few years, there was a gap in my buying books and reading
them. I never depended on the library for my personal or professional need of
books, I preferred to buy. Yet, with family life and professional engagements
and socialising with colleagues, participating in teachers’ movement, and with
the entry of television in life, reading got affected. The gap between
purchase and reading of books kept widening, and with a lot of magazines coming
up in Hindi, Punjabi and English, the demand/urge for writing further affected
my reading. So much so that even after rejoining JNU, the situation did not
improve. Rather, it worsened with the entry of computers with internet
facility. Now, the situation is that while my purchase of books never stopped
or slowed, even after retirement without pension, my reading has further
diminished.
I
have more than 5,000 books in my personal collection of Hindi, Punjabi, English
and, lately, of Urdu, yet, I may not have read more than 2,000 of these,
perhaps less. That does not mean that average reading has completely stopped,
which perhaps is not less than 60 books a year. But since internet/magazines
consume too much time, the average reading has reduced substantially. Had these
factors not entered life, my average reading would not have been less than 200
books a year.
While
joining The University of West Indies (UWI), Trinidad & Tobago in 2010-11,
my one temptation was to read many books that I felt I must read and also see
films. So, I brought more than 500 books and about 100 or so film DVDs there,
knowing it would not be easy to fulfill the desire, as I had a task at hand --
complete at least one major manuscript and travel to a lot of countries nearby.
So,
my reading of books restarted after reaching Port of Spain. It started with a
pile of Hindi, Punjabi and English magazines, which I mostly scanned, including
two important issues of Journal of Literature &Aesthetics focused
on Indian dalit literature in Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali,
Gujrati, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam. Edited by Dr. D.Sreenivasan from Kollam
in Kerala, this was a good literary journal. In scanned issues of Summer
Hill Review, Law Animated World, Mainstream, Frontline,
and Frontier in English; Filhal, Virsa, Sirjana and Chirag in
Punjabi and Tadbhav,Shesh, Parikatha,Naya
Gyanoudey, Vasudha, Samkallen Janmat,Aalochna and Apeksha in
Hindi.
Leo
Tolstoy's classic novel 'Anna Karenina' is my favourite, too,
after reading its summary in Hindi in 'Naya Gyanoudey'. Since my
books were to arrive by courier a few days later, I got some books from the
Indian High commission library there. Before that, famous Hindi writer and
Professor in Hindi, Susham Bedi (she died in the beginning of COVID-19), gifted
her books-Chidiya Aur Cheel' (stories) and 'Shabdon ki
Khidkiyan'(poems) to me in New York. I also got her novel 'Havan'
from the High Commission library to complete reading her writings in poetry,
and fiction.
Among
the few more books borrowed from the library were Asha Rani Vohra's-Swatantarta
Senani Lekhikayen'(Freedom fighter women writers), this included Bhagat
Singh groups' activist Susheela Mohan's sketch as well. Also Dr. Bharat
Mishra's '1857 ki Kranti aur uske pramukh krantikari', Dr. Kailash
Kumari Sahay's 'Pravasi Bhartiyon ki Hindi seva' and Vimlesh
Kanti and Dheera Verma's 'Fiji mein Hindi. The last two books
that I read were to refresh my exposure to Hindi language in Mauritius, Fiji,
Trinidad &Tobago, Suriname and Guyana--five countries of Indian descent
people domination where political power also remains with or shared by Indian
descent people. I also read Bahadurshah Zafar's Urdu poetry transliterated in
Hindi.
(To be continued)
Books on Neglected Aspects of Freedom Struggle Are a Veritable Treasure
In the concluding part of
his reading journey, the writer highlights the contribution of Rahul
Sankrityayan and a host of Punjabi and Bengali writers.
30
Jun 2022
Among
the more important books that I read in Hindi during my stay in Trinidad are
Rahul Sankrityayan's-'Ghummakad Swami' (The Traveler Hermitage)
and 'Aaj Ki Samasyayen'. Both these are not available these days
and a photocopy was gifted to me by Dr. P.N.Vidyarthi, when I visited
his house in Ranchi in 2007 or 08.
Ghummakad
Swami is
a semi-autobiographical account or Sankritayayan’s travelogues, which included
a Punjab travelogue in 1919, when the Jallianwalabagh massacre took place. Very
few people know that Sankrityayan had deep knowledge about pre-Partition Punjab
too.
'Aaj
ki Samasyayen' is
a 1945 book, and includes four important articles -- Pakistan ya
jatiyon ki samasaya (Pakistan or Problem of Nationalities), Matar
Bhashayon ki samasya (Problem of Mother Tongues, Pragatisheelta
ka Prashan (Question of Progressivism) and Aaj ka sahityakar (Writer
of Today). The book is really enlightening, it explains in a very rational and
objective way how the creation of Pakistan became inevitable.
Sankrityayan
rightly blames the Hindu majoritarian fundamentalist attitude of treating the
Muslim community like untouchables and also Hindu capitalists not allowing
Muslim capitalists to have share in national wealth. Partition was made
inevitable by both the communities’ ruling feudal and bourgeoise classes,
because the Hindu ruling classes were not ready to share the appropriation of
wealth from the Muslim ruling classes in a fair manner. And they did not allow
Muslim community members into Hindu kitchens or used to serve them food/water
in separate utensils even among friends.
Sankrityayan
rightly asks: Which self-respecting person will tolerate this treatment? And,
he predicted the fallout of Bangladesh at that very time. In his opinion,
language is at the core of the nationality issue, though religion also is a
strong factor and geography, too. This became true in the case of creation of
Bangladesh in 1971. Sankrityayan counted 73 nationalities in India in 1945 and
11 in the proposed Pakistan at that time.
The
article, Matar Bhashayon ki samasayen, also deals with the
sensitive issue of mother tongue. Sankrityayan is against Hindi's domination
over mother tongues like Bhojpuri, Maithili, Santhali etc. People, and my
friends like Prof. Amarnath Sharma, should read this article to understand the
language sensitivity of people that can explode if any oppression of their
language is done.
This
also made me realise that Mahatma Gandhi and Premchand conceived that Hindustani is
no more possible or feasible except in verbal communication. The existence of
Hindi and Urdu as two closely linked but separate languages should be accepted,
yet young children can easily learn both the languages easily if this is made
part of school curricula.
Rahul
Sankrityayan was a versatile writer-activist. Born in 1893, he lived up to
1963, completing 70 years of life. From a traditional Hindu family, to becoming
a monk, then Arya Samajist, then Buddhist and finally a Marxist, he
authored/edited/translated nearly 150 books in Hindi, Pali, English and
Tibetan.
Sankrityayan
travelled a lot and his book 'Ghummakad Shashtra' is
traveller's guide book. He travelled on foot/ponies/buses/trains/ships/by air
and visited many countries. He was a professor in Sri Lanka and perhaps in the
erstwhile Soviet Union as well, where he married and his progeny lives there
(his Russian wife-born son also died). His Indian wife Kamala Sankrityayan died
a few years ago. His son and daughter Jaya and Jeta live in India.
Sankrityayan
faced lathi blows along with writer Nagarajun during the
peasant movement in Bihar and served many months in various jails. When I get
bogged down with my multifarious activities, then his life shows me the way. He
could start writing four books at a time.
A
very significant book that I read and which literally shook me is an old
classic -- Dinabandhu Mitra's Bengali play 'Neel Darpan' ,
written in 1860, just three years after the First Indian War for Independence
took place. The play exposes British colonial cruelties on the Indian people,
who destroyed Indian peasants for doing indigo farming. The kind of cruelties
committed and described in this 90-page play reminded me of Abhimanyu Anat's 'Lal
Pasina' set in Mauritius that exposed the brutal cruelties on Indian indentured
labour taken to that country by the British.
There
are similar stories of cruelties on Indian indentured labour in Trinidad
& Tobago, where I was based and also in Suriname, Guyana and Fiji. So
has been the case in South Africa and other African countries colonised by the
British those days.
Neel
Darpan was
translated into English by a British Christian priest and he was jailed
for that. The play was performed in theatres in Calcutta in 1872 for the first
time and despite ticketed entry, large crowds turned up to watch it. This play
has become relevant again now, when under the neo liberal/colonial policies,
peasant lands are again being snatched in favour of multinational companies to
establish industries. I wish someone translated this play in Punjabi.
Another
significant, though controversial novel of 1961, is again a translation from
Bengali, called 'Plassey ka Yudh' by Tapan Mohan
Chattopadhyaya. It is a history-based novel, but underlines historic dates and
incidents perhaps accurately. It is written from the anti-Sirajudaulah angle
and, in a way, supports the rise of British occupation of India led by Robert
Clive. But, it attacks British myths, like Calcutta's blackhole story, where, in the writer's
view, not more than 30 Britishers died, but Sirajudaulah had no hand in
it. Though the Britishers propagated it as brutality by Sirajudaulah, and gave
the figure of the dead as around 150.
During
the 1857 War of Independence, therewas another blackhole in Ajnala in
Punjab, where the British Deputy commissioner at that time made 257
Indian freedom fighters die of suffocation. The Britishers created a
monument to a false blackhole, but the Indian government has nothing to show
the Ajnala blackhole as a reminder of colonial brutalities.
An
interesting feature of the 1757 Plassey war actors have been their personal
tragedies. Starting with Sirajudaulah, who lived for just 25 years, which
included 14 months of being the Bengal Nawab, and was murdered in the
most brutal and cruel manner. Mir Jafar, the traitor, who was also a close
relative of Siraj, died in 1765 due to leprosy, and was hated by everyone,
even his sons. Meeran, who killed all the close relations of Siraj in fear of
the Nawab’s throne being passed on to them, died of lightning. Maharaja Nand Kumar
was hanged. British Admiral Watson did not survive even two months of the
Plassey war and was buried in St. John graveyard. The 'hero' Clive, who looted
Rs 21 lakh from the Plassey war, killed himself on November 22, 1774. Almost a
similar fate was met by the Jallianwalabagh mass murderer, General Dyer.
Some
Punjabi books that I read in this period also included Gurdial Singh's
novel 'Aahan', Gurbachan Bhullar's travelogue "Ek Amreeka
Eh Vi', Swarajbir's play 'Kallar', Atamjit's play 'Mangu
Comrade',Nand Singh Mehta's autobiographical novel 'Suhe Rahan da
Safar'.
The
400-page first part of 'Aahan' has been published 17 years after
Gurdial Singh’s last novel 'Parsa' was published. Its second part
should have come by now, but seems to have been delayed. This novel
also narrates the story of British colonial power's destruction of the
peasantry and a village Karamgarh near Jaitu. Set after the Praja Mandal
movement in the 1936-40 period, the novel also depicts the cruelties of the
colonial police at its worst. When peasants have nothing to eat due to a locust
attack that destroys crops in the whole village, the British masters are bent
upon charging annual land tax from peasants.
Gurbachan
Bhullar's travelogue of America is an example of objective observation of a
country about which there are a lot of prejudices. Written in an interesting
style, I liked the book a lot, but was surprised with Bhullar's depiction of
how Khalistanis had overtaken the Ghadar party's Stockton Gurdwara and dumped
all the Ghadarite fighters’ photographs, which did not create any ripples in
Punjab, even among the Leftists.
Government
occupation of Yugantar Ashram – the Ghadar Party HQ in San Francisco -- not
being opened daily is another shocking fact that did not seem to have bothered
anyone. It should be protested strongly in my view in India and abroad by all
right-thinking Punjabis and Indians.
Swarajbir's
play focuses on pauperisation of Punjab's peasantry in recent times
and their fate in foreign countries, where they try to escape. Though realistic,
this play is not as impactful as his earlier plays, such as Dharamguru and Krishna.
Atamjit's
play opens our eyes to the great Indian freedom fighter in Kenya-Makhan Singh,
whose sacrifices were recognised even by Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of
independent Kenya, but whose role was soon to be forgotten by Kenya as well as
India. This play has a good look at history, but Atamjit has unnecessarily
tried to undermine the character of a revolutionary by making his character overplay
the Gandhian philosophy.
Nand
Singh Mehta's Suhe Rahan da Safar-Trails of Red Path is neither an
autobiography nor a novel. It would have been better if he had
written plain memoirs of the Naxalite movement in the Bathinda area,
where he was an activist. Incidentally, I was an observer during some of his
narrations.
Apart
from Hindi, Punjabi and English readings, I kept on practicing Urdu reading by
way of Ibne Kanwal edited 'Muntakhib Ghazaliyat'. This is a
collection of Urdu ghazals, from the beginning to the
contemporary period.
Philosophical
and Real Problem in Reading Books
The
world of books is like an ocean, and no one can ever think of swimming through
all the waters, yet one is always tempted to read more and more. For
academic/professional/creative writers, it becomes even more difficult to
indulge in the luxury of just reading for pleasure. So, some hard choices need
to be made. A reading selection has to be made. I cannot finish reading my own
purchased books, even if I get 20 more years of healthy life. And I know that I
will have to donate most of my books to some good libraries, if I don't want
these to go waste. (I have already set up Bhagat Singh Archives and
Resource Centre in Delhi Archives in 2018, and am gifting nearly 2,000 books,
journals and other documents on freedom struggle)
Now
I want to write on some of these books. Very few academics have interest in
writing, especially on the history of the revolutionary stream of the freedom
movement. It is not my academic area or study, yet I find it more attractive
than my own professional area, literature. I have lost interest in fashionable
and abstract theories of the academic world, whether in literature or
social sciences, and just wish to record the hard facts/events of some aspects
of the freedom struggle, long neglected or written in a distorted manner by
vested interests.
(Concluded)
The writer is a
retired Professor from JNU and Honorary Advisor to Bhagat Singh Archives and
Resource Centre, New Delhi. He writes on some important books for
Newsclick. Prof.chaman@gmail.com
