Venue for a Speech on Tamas - A Chronicle of an Event That Should Never Have Happened

By Dilip Simeon, published in Bruised Memories: Communal Violence and the Writer, by Tarun Saint (ed), Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002

Early in the year of grace 1988 certain (dis)reputable members of the academic community in the University of Delhi organized a public address on an unspeakable subject by a reluctant speaker in an unlikely location. Your chronicler was one of those persons. Our repute - or notoriety, depending on ideological taste - was on account of our strident criticism of the politics of Hinduttva, at the time a popular philosophy within the teaching community. (It probably still is, although the hopes of its votaries have been somewhat dimmed by the course of events). The address was part of a meeting to discuss the controversial TV serial Tamas, whose storyline suggested to some minds that the Partition of India had been sparked off by the actions of Hindus. Its advent on the household screen had enraged the sensibilities of Hinduttva's hegemons. So severe was their ire that the Hyderabad centre of Doordarshan had been ransacked by the local wing of the BJP in protest and as a token of what could be expected to happen if it continued to be telecast. In our opinion however, Tamas was a balanced and sincere fictionalized portrayal of the dangerous and inhuman consequences of communal politics of whichever hue. The star speaker at our meeting was none other than the author of the script and the venue was the auditorium of Ramjas College. What transpired on that fateful day became an object lesson in the art of intimidation, the politics of speech and the (potential) strength of conviction.

The episode had its origins in the decision by the students' wing of the Hindu nationalists to invite me to participate in a panel discussion of the serial being organized by the university student's union, then under their control. I was approached by the unions' emissaries during the course of a lecture by two visiting Pakistani civil rights activists (ironical, but true), and told them that a far better choice of speaker would be my comrade and colleague, Purushottam Agrawal, who was then employed as a teacher of medeival poetry in the Hindi department of the college. This was agreed upon, and we were duly informed of the date and venue. A week later, on the appointed day we saw posters advertising the seminar at Tagore Hall with a list of names which contained four speakers of known saffron persuasion (known colloquially as shakha mrigs) and two (pseudo)-secularists (to use Shri Advani's quaint and ironic semantic invention) one of whom, Rajendra Mathur of the Hindi daily Navbharat Times subsequently revealed to us that he had no information about the panel discussion and that his name had been announced without his consent. On the lawn outside the Hall and in the company of several students who had come there specifically to hear Purushottam, the latter made clear his anger and irritation at the organizers for having misled us about the nature of the panel, which we had been led to understand was going to be `balanced'. He was inclined at first to boycott the proceedings and deny the event the aura of a democratic debate, so dearly sought after by its organizers.

After considering our options, our little group decided that this was an opportunity not to be wasted. Purushottam was the first speaker and his speech delivered extempore, was the most scintillating polemic against so-called Hindu nationalism that I have ever heard. Drawing upon his knowledge of classical bhakti as well as modern literature and with rhetorical flourishes embellished by his political sense regarding the dangers of incipient fascism, he spent over forty minutes demolishing the arguments and actions of the opponents of the serial. Towards the middle of his oration the organizers and the rest of the panelists (which included a notorious politician from East Delhi) were looking decidedly sheepish, but it is a measure of the power of his words that he held his largely hostile audience spellbound. As our small group sipped tea and chatted in the lawns of the Law Faculty in the aftermath of the meeting Ram Prakash Tripathi, a Ramjas Hindi honours student, suggested that we invite the author of Tamas to the university. Ved Prakash, another of Purushottam's students, enthusiastically supported the idea. We soon convinced ourselves that this was the best way to counter the hysteria being so assiduously built up about the serial. And what better place to invite him to than our own college? A date in early February was tentatively decided upon and arrangements made to invite Bhisham Sahni along with Dewan Birendranath, the well-known Urdu literateur and a stalwart of the anti-communal movement.

One morning, some days before our big event, I arrived at the college to find Ram Prakash standing at the gate holding a stick with an inverted ghara with a gruesome face painted on it. A placard indicated that the face represented "communal forces"...


Read on http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/TamasDILIPSIMEON.html

Italo Calvino: A general in the library

'One day, in the illustrious nation of Panduria, a suspicion crept into the minds of top officials: that books contained opinions hostile to military prestige. In fact trials and enquiries had revealed that the tendency, now so widespread, of thinking of generals as people actually capable of making mistakes and causing catastrophes, and of wars as things that did not always amount to splendid cavalry charges towards a glorious destiny, was shared by a large number of books, ancient and modern, foreign and Pandurese.

Panduria's General Staff met together to assess the situation. But they didn't know where to begin, because none of them was particularly well-versed in matters bibliographical. A commission of enquiry was set up under General Fedina, a severe and scrupulous official. The commission was to examine all the books in the biggest library in Panduria.

The library was in an old building full of columns and staircases, the walls peeling and even crumbling here and there. Its cold rooms were crammed to bursting with books, and in parts inaccessible, with some corners only mice could explore. Weighed down by huge military expenditures, Panduria's state budget was unable to offer any assistance.

The military took over the library one rainy morning in November. The general climbed off his horse, squat, stiff, his thick neck shaven, his eyebrows frowning over pince-nez; four lanky lieutenants, chins held high and eyelids towered, got out of a car, each with a briefcase in his hand. Then came a squadron of soldiers who set up camp in the old courtyard, with mules, bales of hay, tents, cooking equipment, camp radio, and signalling flags.

Sentries were placed at the doors, together with a notice forbidding entry, 'for the duration of large-scale manoeuvres now under way'. This was an expedient which would allow the enquiry to be carried out in great secret. The scholars who used to go to the library every morning wearing heavy coats and scarves and balaclavas so as not to freeze, had to go back home again. Puzzled, they asked each other: 'What's this about large-scale manoeuvres in the library? Won't they make a mess of the place? And the cavalry? And are they going to be shooting too?'

Of the library staff, only one little old man, Signor Crispino, was kept so that he could explain to the officers how the books were arranged. He was a shortish fellow, with a bald, eggish pate and eyes like pinheads behind his spectacles.

First and foremost General Fedina was concerned with the logistics of the operation, since his orders were that the commission was not to leave the library before having completed their enquiry; it was a job that required concentration, and they must not allow themselves to be distracted. Thus a supply of provisions was procured, likewise some barrack stoves and a store of firewood together with some collections of old and it was generally thought uninteresting magazines. Never had the library been so warm in the winter season. Pallet beds for the general and his officers were set up in safe areas surrounded by mousetraps.

Then duties were assigned. Each lieutenant was allotted a particular branch of knowledge, a particular century of history. The general was to oversee the sorting of the volumes and the application of an appropriate rubber stamp depending on whether a book had been judged suitable for officers, NCOs, common soldiers, or should be reported to the Military Court.

And the commission began its appointed task. Every evening the camp radio transmitted General Fedina's report to HQ. 'So many books examined. So many seized as suspect. So many declared suitable for officers and soldiers.' Only rarely were these cold figures accompanied by something out of the ordinary: a request for a pair of glasses to correct short-sightedness for an officer who had broken his, the news that a mule had eaten a rare manuscript edition of Cicero left unattended.

But developments of far greater import were under way, about which the camp radio transmitted no news at all. Rather than thinning out, the forest of books seemed to grow ever more tangled and insidious...' 

Read on: http://www.en.epopteia.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9:italo-calvino-a-general-in-the-library-&catid=1:the-dawn-of-literature&Itemid=7