November 3, 2007

What’s the earliest memory I have about myself? I have tried to look back to catch a glimpse of what could possibly be the earliest scene I can remember about my life.
I don’t remember anything about my birth and infancy, about the place where I was born. That was in a winter morning in November 1913 at a town in Assam called Silchar where my mother’s uncle was a prison doctor. My mother told me later that I was born early morning at about 5. I don’t know who were all there to receive me (…)

These were sent after N.C.’s demise and published in the Mainstream issues dated August 29, 1998 and August 1, 1998 respectively. —Editor
The condolence resolution passed by the Press Council of India on the 4th of this month (August) must have reached you by this time. In addition, the individual members expressed their own feelings and narrated their reminiscences of Dada who was also associated with the Press Council as its member for three years from 1995.
I had the fortune of (…)

In their little den on Park Lane in Calcutta half a dozen young Malayalees, mostly clerks and typists, listened intently as a tiny bespectacled man in his early 30s read aloud a graphic account of how the city greeted India’s independence only a couple of days earlier. As the momentous hour approached, the multitudes of the hitherto riot-torn metropolis had poured out on to the streets singing, dancing, spontaneously embracing one another and welcoming the dawn of freedom in near delirium. (…)

With the passing away of Nikhil Chakravartty and Mahbub ul Haq less than three weeks apart, on 27 June and 16 July, South Asia has lost two outstanding individuals who belonged to different countries yet shared a deep commitment to the region.
While the fact that Nikhil Chakravartty was Indian and Mahbub ul Haq was Pakistani underlines their distinct national identities within South Asia, their personal attributes were so universal and humanistic that they rose above the variances to (…)

It was the mid-forties that I first came across Nikhil. Bundle, my eldest brother, belonged to the outer fringe of the Indian Communist students group formed in England in the late 1930s. Indrajit Gupta, Mohan Kumaramangalam, Parvati Krishnan, N.K. Krishnan, Bhupesh Gupta, Renu Chakravartty, Jyoti Basu, Arun Bose, Rajani Patel, Nikhil Chakravartty were among the members of this group. They all worked with and in the Communist Party of India on their return to our country. At first it was an (…)

Why does India need a renewed policy towards Afghanistan? October 2007 marks six years since Afghanistan has been occupied by outside forces. Hitherto, there’s been a rising cynicism with the Indian policy, or the lack of it, towards Afghanistan. India’s interests in Afghanistan are clear—containment of conflict in its extended neighbourhood and a stake in the energy resources and trade opportunities in the region. But, the relationship with Afghanistan has the undertone of a chronic (…)

The four days of Durga Puja signify carnival time in West Bengal. On the main Saptami Puja day—Thursday, October 18—a few of us witnessed a tiny act of defiance by the small traders of Nonachandanpukur Bazaar, in Barrackpore, within the area loosely called Greater Calcutta.
I say Nonachandanpukur Bazaar, but the 58 year old bazaar was bulldozed to the ground on December 29, 2006, by the now familiar combination of policemen and party cadre. The site is fenced with corrugated tin, and (…)

The 17th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held in mid October (15-21), elected members to the two highest echelons of the Party, the 25-member Polit-Bureau and the Polit-Bureau Standing Committee comprising nine topmost leaders of China. It has given the mandate of Presidentship to Hu Jintao for another five-year term. The Party Congress also made amendments to the constitution to incorporate the incumbent President Hu’s theory of ‘scientific development’ that would (…)

BOOK REVIEW
P.C. Joshi: A Biography by Gargi Chakravartty; National Book Trust of India, New Delhi; 2007; Price: Rs 30.
Gargi Chakravartty has done a historic service to the cause that Joshiji held to his heart, namely, awaken the masses for social transformation within the national specifics and international generalities, and that too with a human face. In order to do this he organised with a human heart even when he was subjected to the most vitriolic attacks in the organisation that (…)

On October 24, 2007 Subrata Banerjee passed away at his daughter’s residence in Washington at the age of 88.
He was born on November 21, 1919 in Dhaka in East Bengal. Both his parents came from cultured bhadralok families. In spite of many financial and other difficulties his father Sunit Kumar managed to earn his Ph.D. from Birmingham University in 1932 and taught English Literature in several colleges in Bengal and outside Bengal. His mother Nalinibala, who was only 13 when she was (…)