This is meant to be a political piece. So, ideally this should be a sequence of logical steps–like the proof of a mathematical result. However, the absurdity in contemporary Kolkata under the Fraulein makes one cry out utterances as in absurd drama.
Nevertheless we begin with the definitions, as in Mathematics. Political goon is well-known–much too well-known–as being often nearly synonymous with the real political practices under the veneer of our venerated parliamentary democracy. Didi–the Fuehrer (with a bit of apology to the Germans for this bad grammar), of course, is Mamata. Gurudev – Rabindranath was the son of one of the richest landlords of the nineteenth century Bengal who, cushioned by the enormous rentier income in his family, created epoch-making literature in Bengali. While he managed to give astonishing expressions to almost every kind of emotion and feeling — even hunger and armed resistance against oppressors.Mussolini for a university he used to run. Now, quite some years after his death he has become a victim of an unfortunate infatuation of the Didi which is breeding much comedy and some unpleasantness.
May 13, 2011 is a memorable day for Bengal. Sadly perhaps, the day may turn out to be almost as memorable as the ascendancy to power in the ’30’s Germany of a bad painter who used to shout out nonsensical prejudices. Some Fuehrers are alike — scheming egomaniacs usurping outcomes of people’s anger and then cheating them, living ostensibly frugal lives, spewing bullshit in speeches, painting bad pictures and raising gangs of goons.
After decades of chicanery and subjugation against them even in the ‘so-called independent’ India, the people of Jangalmahal in Bengal rose up in 2008 against the state power. Their line of action followed Rabindranath — there was voluntary and democratic participation in the villages and faced with the relentless torture of the state power–that of the governmental ‘joint forces’ and the NGOs of Harmads — they did not deter from armed resistance, as Rabindranath advised at times. They even gave away lives fearlessly, again quite in correspondence with Rabindranath’s vision. The snakes breathing out poison–the Left Front Government, a chummy Chidambaram in Delhi, and their expensively armed gangs — used conventional weapons of repression like beating and killing people as well as throwing people into jail indiscriminately (as well as a bit non-conventional ones like shitting into wells for drinking water in Jangalmahal villages not quite welcoming to them).
People were angry all over Bengal. The resulting long and persistent rebellion of the masses will inspire generations. Fraulein Fuehrer came to power. Several times before the election, she demanded the withdrawal of joint forces from Jangalmahal and releasing the political victims–the prisoners–of the erstwhile regime.
The story thenceforth is quite straightforward. Her gangs of goons are proliferating quite healthily all over Bengal. They are proving themselves almost as efficient in extorting money from the villagers and the common people and in intimidating them as their brethren in CPIM were. Some of these CPIM lumpens just have changed sides. Then, in the time-honoured tradition of the Congress party, these Trinamool gangs are having bloody fights among themselves almost everyday over the share of the loot.
The Fraulein, of course, has declined to do the two simple things that the common people of Jangalmahal demanded most — releasing these prisoners and withdrawing the joint forces.
And the Fuehrer she is, a magnificent plan of creating 10,000 storm-troopers out of the poor youth of Jangalmahal is afoot, perhaps to blossom her Bhairav Bahini in Jangalmahal and hopefully to develop a full-fledged civil war.
In her recent speeches–what emerged out of the rants she made–it is evident that like the celebrated goddess in one of Rabindranath’s plays, she is dreaming of a thorough-going bloodshed in Jangalmahal (as well as in Kolkata perhaps where some internet-using truant ‘intellectuals’, she suspects, take up the cause of the deprived people in Jangalmahal and elsewhere, much to her chagrin). The drama should unfold soon. She has won hearty approval from the West Bengal governor and the chums in the ruling class. Jindals should be loving it.
True, a celebrated song of Rabindranath asks for getting beaten more and more. The infatuated Didi has been faithfully ensuring that for quite some time now.
It is yet to be seen whether she also spurns the most recent opportunity (of October 04) of arriving at a just solution in Jangalmahal leading to fruitful peace there.
Incidentally, in a candid interview on September 24 in Star Ananda (snippets here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD5ez2KvRm8), a Bengali news channel, the Fuehrer conjured up a novel named “Kadambini” which she imagined was written by Rabindranath. She was improvising a reference to a sentence she quoted out of context and the sentence concerned was written by the unfortunate Rabindranath in a short story called “Jibito o Mrito”. Media largely suppressed this new piece of occasional buffoonery by the Fraulein in the otherwise sinister interview where she thundered about impending police action in the state.
Not all political goons have intellectual pretensions. Only some have.
By: Debashis
General Secretary, Rationalists’ and Humanists’ Forum of India
RATIONALIST DEBASHIS 