P.A. Krishnan's Blog, page 8

No Orchids for Miss Blandish – James Hadley Chase

James Hadley Chase novels were once the favorites of all college going boys and girls in India. When I was in college, the paperback versions had started coming out and I too got addicted to him and his racy style. I am not sure he is being read now, but people of my age or even the ones who are a decade or two younger than I am do get nostalgic when his name is mentioned.

His No Orchids for Miss Blandish came out in 1939 the year in which world war II started. Believe it or not its another title was The Virgin and the Villain! It became a huge hit and it sold more than half a million copies in hard-bound edition.

The Story

American heiress Miss Blandish is kidnapped by a gang of inept criminals trying their hand at big-time crime. Their plans are foiled when a rival mob, led by the sadist Slim Grisson, set their sights on the glamorous million-dollar hostage. Meanwhile, Private Detective Dave Fenner is hired to rescue her. Fenner is no stranger to the criminal underworld. If corruption and violence are necessary, Fenner will do what it takes to get the job done. Behind the scenes, Slim becomes obsessed with his hostage, lashing out at anyone who attempts to wrestle Miss Blandish from his charge. When Fenner makes his move, Slim won’t give her up without a fight. Slim is sexually impotent, but takes a macabre fancy to Miss Blandish. Slim’s mother, who is the real brains of the gang, sees in this the chance of curing Slim’s impotence, and decides to keep Miss Blandish in custody till Slim shall have succeeded in raping her. After many efforts and much persuasion, including the flogging of Miss Blandish with a length of rubber hosepipe, the rape is achieved.  By means of bribery and torture the detective and the police manage to round up and exterminate the whole gang. Slim escapes with Miss Blandish and is killed after a final rape, and the detective prepares to restore Miss Blandish to her family. By this time, however, she has developed such a taste for Slim’s brutality that she feels unable to live without him, and she jumps out of the window of the building in which she has been held captibe.

The Reception

The reason why I chose this novel over the other novels of Chase is that this novel has the privilege of a review by none other than George Orwell! He concedes that this is no ordinary novel. I can do no better than quoting a few passages from his long review.

It is not, as one might expect, the product of an illiterate hack, but a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere. …, the whole book… is written in the American language; the author, an Englishman who has (I believe) never been in the United States, seems to have made a complete mental transference to the American underworld.

It is implied throughout No Orchids that being a criminal is only reprehensible in the sense that it does not pay. Being a policeman pays better, but there is no moral difference, since the police use essentially criminal methods. In a book like He Won’t Need It Now the distinction between crime and crime-prevention practically disappears. This is a new departure for English sensational fiction, in which till recently there has always been a sharp distinction between right and wrong and a general agreement that virtue must triumph in the last chapter. English books glorifying crime (modern crime, that is — pirates and highwaymen are different) are very rare.

 Several people, after reading No Orchids, have remarked to me, ‘It’s pure Fascism’. This is a correct description, although the book has not the smallest connexion with politics and very little with social or economic problems…. It is a daydream appropriate to a totalitarian age. In his imagined world of gangsters Chase is presenting, as it were, a distilled version of the modern political scene, in which such things as mass bombing of civilians, the use of hostages, torture to obtain confessions, secret prisons, execution without trial, floggings with rubber truncheons, drownings in cesspools, systematic falsification of records and statistics, treachery, bribery, and quislingism(treachery) are normal and morally neutral, even admirable when they are done in a large and bold way. The average man is not directly interested in politics, and when he reads, he wants the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals;

One ought not to infer too much from the success of Mr. Chase’s books. It is possible that it is an isolated phenomenon, brought about by the mingled boredom and brutality of war. But if such books should definitely acclimatize themselves in England, instead of being merely a half-understood import from America, there would be good grounds for dismay.

The Book as a film

The book was made into a film and the British press attacked it without mercy. Monthly Film Bulletin described the film as “The most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen“, claiming that the BBFC (censors) had seriously erred in judging the film suitable for exhibition. The Daily Express critic claimed that “the film sets out to appeal to the prurient-minded, the twisted, the unbalanced”.  Sunday Times review was in the form of a letter to the censor, claiming the reviewer was surprised the board had found the film fit for exhibition and that the reviewer was so stunned by it that she was “momentarily … incapable of movement“!

Dr. Edith Summerskill, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food in the Labour government, subsequently made a presidential address to the Association of Married Women claiming that the film would pervert the minds of the British people and urging the members to protest. Labour MP Tom Driberg also tabled a parliamentary question asking whether a Royal Commission could be appointed to examine the BBFC’s working methods!
Amidst this mounting pressure, the BBFC claimed to be puzzled about the “excitement” generated by the film, as significant cuts had been required and what remained was “a normal gangster film, no more brutal than many made in Hollywood“.

When I read it now

When we read the books in the seventies of the last century, the second world war was a distant event and we didn’t consider the book Fascist at all. After all, we were then all aware that the Fascist techniques were much more gory than the novel’s imagined horrors. But one thing that pricked me was the unrelieved violence in the novel and the complete absence of hope. Even today, it is the hopelessness that hit me when I read it again. In that respect, the novel is depressingly anti-human.

The White Nile – Alan Moorehead

The first time I saw the book ‘The White Nile’ was when I was a probationer in Delhi. One of my fellow probationers was carrying it which I borrowed for a few hours. I immediately became a lifelong fan of the author. I rushed that evening to Connaught Place and bought the book from the Galgotia (an iconic bookshop which had died a few years ago) bookshop. The book has a companion–The Blue Nile – but The White Nile belongs to the ‘classics’ category. Recently, Tim Jeal has come out with a book titled The Explorers of the Nile, which is brilliant and reestablishes the reputation of Speke, but Moorehead has a charm of his own.

The Mystery of Nile

No unexplored region in our times, neither the heights of the Himalayas, the Antarctic wastes, nor even the hidden side of the moon, has excited quite the same fascination as the mystery of the sources of the Nile. For 2,000 years at least the problem was debated and remained unsolved; every expedition that was sent up the river from Egypt returned defeated. By the middle of the nineteenth century — barely a hundred years ago — this matter had become, in Harry Johnston’s phrase, ‘the greatest geographical secret after the discovery of America’. – The Author in his preface

The Nile that flows in Egypt is the ‘full’ Nile. It becomes a single river in Khartoum, Sudan, where the White Nile and the Blue Nile join. The Blue Nile originates from Ethiopia. The source of the White Nile is still being debated. Though the White Nile flows from Lake Victoria, a British explorer, Neil McGregor, claimed in 2006 that he had found the most distant source in Rwanda, at the beginning of the Kagera River.

he book ‘The White Nile’ covers the period between 1856 and 1900 when several exciting incidents took place along the White Nile.

Burton and Speke

Richard Francis Burton was already a big name when the Royal Geographical Society accepted his offer of leading an expedition to trace the source of the White Nile. He was, in addition to being an officer of the East India Company’s Bombay Light Infantry, a great linguist and a translator. He was also a veteran of many expeditions. In 1853, he went on a dangerous journey to Mecca and Medina, dressed as a Muslim Pathan. He chose John Hanning Speke, a fellow officer in the Indian Army, as his companion. The expedition began well and what they thought was a single great lake inland was in fact three separate lakes – today known as Lake Victoria, (a source of Nile) Lake Tanganyika (a source of the river Congo) and Lake Malawi (a source of Zambezi). Burton fell ill meanwhile and Speke who went ahead returned with the news that he had found the source of Nile and it was Lake Victoria. Burton was skeptical (he thought it was Lake Tanganyika) and the rift between the two started, which finally ended in the mysterious death of Speke just before he was to engage Burton in a debate which was due to take place in the city of Bath.

Fame is but ephemeral. The author says:

Later a plaque was placed at the Ripon Falls. It read

SPEKE DISCOVERED THIS SOURCE OF THE NILE ON THE 28 JULY 1862

                       ‘This source’, one notes: not the source. But it hardly matters. The Ripon Falls have now been submerged beneath a hydro-electric dam, and somewhere in the green depths of the great river the place where Speke’s plaque used to stand has been obliterated for ever.

Dr. Livingstone and Stanley

One of the famous meetings of the 19th century was the one between Livingstone and Stanley when the latter greeted the Doctor with the words, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’. The Doctor was an important hero of the 19th century England and his books were a sensation. Livingstone too was obsessed by his quest for the Nile sources and his desire for the destruction of the slave trade, but his illness overcame him. In May 1873, at Chitambo in what is now northern Zambia, Livingstone’s African servants found him dead, kneeling by his bedside as if in prayer. In a difficult journey of several months, they carried his body to the coast. It was taken to England and, in a great Victorian funeral, was buried in Westminster Abbey. This is how Moorehead describes the event:

However often the story is told of Susi’s and Chuma’s journey to the coast with Livingstone’s body it remains incredible, and perhaps it was a miracle of a kind, since such devotion among primitive and uneducated men can hardly have been inspired by any ordinary emotion. They cut out the heart and viscera, and dried the body in the sun for a fortnight. It was then wrapped in calico and placed in a cylinder of bark taken from a tree, and this in turn was sewn into a sheet of sailcloth and lashed to a pole so that it could be carried by two men. In the middle of May, Susi, Chuma, and sixty-odd men who had remained faithful to the end, set out for Zanzibar. Well over 1,000 miles divided them from the Indian Ocean, and it was not really feasible that such a strange burden could be carried over that distance in the heart of Africa where so many tribes were out to despoil every wayfarer who came by. Nevertheless the journey was accomplished in eleven months.

Two Adversaries

In the 19th century a conflict took place that is uncannily similar to the one that took place between the US and Osama bin Laden. Then the adversaries were General Gordon and Mahdi. The General was an intensely religious fanatic, who butchered the Chinese with no remorse during the Taiping Uprising of China that lasted between 1851 and 1864. The other was Al Mahdi who wanted to and established, albeit briefly, a religious kingdom at Omdurman, which was on the left bank of Nile, opposite the great city of Khartoum in Sudan. When he was threatening Khartoum Gordon was sent to evacuate Egyptian forces. Khartoum came under siege for a month and on 26 January 1885 the rebels broke into the city, killing Gordon (apparently against Mahdi’s instructions) and the other defenders. The British relief force arrived two days later. The British public reacted to his death by acclaiming ‘Gordon of Khartoum’, a martyred warrior-saint.

The author says:

For some months prior to the fall of Khartoum Gordon’s name had been a household word, not only in England but throughout the rest of the world as well, and it evoked the extremes of pity and admiration almost everywhere. From one end of Britain to the other the public had anxiously and eagerly followed the story of Wolseley’s advance (the officer sent to rescue Gordon and his troops), and had debated Gordon’s chances of holding out. Towards the end of January hopes had run very high. Punch had actually anticipated the rescue by publishing at the beginning of February a full-page cartoon which showed the General at the gates of Khartoum welcoming the expedition into the city. The caption was ‘At last!’ The following week the magazine was obliged to make a painful and humiliating retraction. It printed another cartoon showing an agonized Britannia with her arm over her eyes and in the background the Mahdi riding with his hosts into Khartoum. The caption this time was ‘Too late!

Mahdi, incidentally, died a natural death at the age of 41, probably due to typhoid.

A prescient Author

It is amazing that Alan Moorehead very clearly predicted the conflict between Islam and Christianity would be played out in Africa and its neighbourhood. He says:

“Christianity, then, penetrated Central Africa under the cover of Islam, and it is remarkable that the Moslems took so long to realize what was happening to them. In the early days they were almost unfailingly helpful to the missionaries and explorers; they welcomed them as civilized companions in the vast wilderness of African barbarity. It was only later, at the end of the 1870s, when they saw that they were facing destruction — or at any rate subservience — at the hands of the Christians that they turned hostile. The Arabi rising in Egypt, the revolt of the Mahdi in the Sudan, and the persecution of the Christian missionaries and their followers in Buganda, were the result. These disturbances ended, as we have seen, in the crushing defeat of Islam along the Nile, but it has proved to be only a temporary defeat. Since 1900 there has been a steady resurgence of Islam in East and Central Africa, and at the present time the Moslems are gaining more adherents than are the Christians; as Roland Oliver points out, they are winning ‘the race — for the animist peoples of the world’. Uganda, admittedly, is largely Christian now, but it will soon be an independent state, and both Egypt and the Sudan are already under Moslem rule. No prudent man, however, would venture to say that this is the final end of the matter. The conflict between the two religions — the East against the West — appears to be a permanent part of the African scene; it flows on, sometimes underground, sometimes above, as persistently and inevitably as the Nile itself.”

Moorehead’s book, even after 60 years, makes a gripping reading, which is a hallmark of a classic.

Sir Donald Bradman, A Biography – Irving Rosenwater

My love with Bradman started when I was very young. One of the first English books I ever read was Bradman’s ‘Farewell to Cricket’. Later I discovered in one of my friends’ house a set of clippings from ‘the Hindu’ which to my delight were a series of articles written by Jack Fingleton titled ‘Brightly fades the Don’, when Bradman retired from cricket in 1949. I have been seeing several biographies on Bradman since then, the last significant one being Roland Perry’s ‘The Don – The Definitive Biography of Sir Donald’ published in the year 2000. There is also a book by B J Wakley which appeared in the year 1959 which is the ultimate record book on Bradman, containing a full description of every innings he played, giving details of his failures and successes, and the complete statistics of his amazing record. For instance, it was from his book that I learnt that if every chance he gave had been taken his average in tests would still be 74.49!

The Best Biography

Still, I consider Irving Rosenwater’s Bradman the best biography I have read, for one simple reason. It confronts the detractors of Bradman eyeball to eyeball and answers every one of them, with razor-sharp logic and figures. For instance, there is this idiocy that goes on even now that Bradman would not have made those legendary centuries today. Rosenwater tells us how this line of argument is bogus. In 1967 a player told Bradman that he would not get the runs he did had he been playing then because the bowling and field placing had become more scientific. Rosenwater says Bradman’s answer was simple. ‘I believe a champion of any era would have been a champion of any other era. It is purely a question of adaptability.’

We all know that his test average of 99.94, which would have been 100 if that infernal Hollies hadn’t bowled him for a duck and had allowed him to score just one boundary, has remained unsurpassed until today. The second best (of the batsmen who have played 50 or more tests) is Steve Smith of Australia and his average is 61.8–almost forty runs less! In the case of Smith, there are several others who are near him. For instance Sangakkara has an average 57.4. During Bradman’s time too, there were other champions, but no one was anywhere near him in the matter of centuries or averages. Sutcliffe had an average of 60.73 and Hammond 58.45. Bradman would have been Bradman in any era–simply unsurpassable.

1930 tour of England

Rosenwater narrates how some of the English players were dismissive of Bradman when he appeared on the scene in the Australian season of 1928-29 and confidently predicted that he would be a spectacular failure in England. For instance, Percy Fender, a player and a leading critic, said this: “Promise there is in Bradman in plenty, though watching him does not inspire one with confidence that he desires to take the only course, which will lead him to a fulfillment of that promise. He makes a mistake, then makes it again and again…”

Bradman answered the critics the only way known to him–with his bat. His test aggregate on the first tour of England in 1930 is 974, which is not equaled even today.

This is what Rosenwater says of his 254 at Lord’s.

“He played the most perfect innings of his life…renowned by no means simply for its numerical size but for the sheer perfection of its stroke-play and footwork. Not a chance was given; hardly a false stroke was made; never once the ball lifted off the ground. That such a perfection should have been maintained over a period of more than five and a half hours… showed Bradman to possess not only a buoyant faith in himself but the most remarkable qualities of concentration and single-mindedness.”

“Bradman’s very first ball in that innings was driven firmly to long-off – ‘an impertinent crack’ recalled Cardus years later, ‘and when he finished the stroke he was close enough to J C White to see the look of astonishment on the bowler’s face. Nobody had dreamed in England then of using feet with impunity to J C White.”

It was soon Bradman vs England and the Bodyline was born.

The Bodyline Series

Harold Larwood, who was the main bowler of the Bodyline series of 1932-33, says in his book ‘Bodyline?’: “We thought Don was frightened of sharp rising balls and we reasoned that if he got a lot of them over the leg stump he would be put off his game and be intimidated and eventually, having to direct his shots to leg all the time, would give a catch to one of the onside fieldsmen … Jardine asked me if I thought I could bowl on the leg stump making the ball come up into the body all the time so that Bradman had to play all his shots to leg. ‘“Yes, I think that can be done,’ I said.”

Jardine called it fast leg theory; Australians called it bodyline. Rosenwater writes: ‘Without Bradman there would have been no bodyline. Without Jardine there would have been no bodyline.‘ I don’t want to digress and dwell on the bodyline series, but what were Bradman’s scores against bodyline bowling?

First Test: didn’t play

Second Test: 0 and 103 not out,

Third Test: 8 and 66

Fourth Test: 76,and 24

Fifth Test 48 and 71

He topped the Australian averages and made most runs for Australia. His average was 56.57. The second best was McCabe with an average of 42.77. He scored at least one fifty in every test. Only nuts will say that this was the average of a ‘flinching’ batsman.  Incidentally, it is impossible to bowl bodyline today. A law was passed soon after the series that “direct attack” bowling was unfair and it became the responsibility of the umpires to identify and stop it. In 1957, the laws were altered to prevent more than two fielders standing behind square on the leg side. Later changes in the law, under the heading of “Short Pitched Bowling”, also restricted the number of “bouncers” which may be bowled in an over.

The author drives the final nail in the coffin by quoting Larwood himself. He said these words when he was 70, in the year 1975:

“There was only one man we were after–Bradman. There’ll never be another like him. I’ve never seen such quick footwork…you couldn’t afford to bowl at his off stump or he’d have smashed you all over the place…Bradman tried all roads to play me. He used to back away, not because he was scared, but to make room to try to hit me through the off side.”

Bradman against India

When the war started Bradman was at his prime. He was just 31. When the war ended he was 37. More than six years of his cricketing years were wasted. Still, he was the champion cricketer when England arrived in 1946-47, he scored brilliantly with an amazing average of 97.14. But against India he was even better and his average was 178.75!

Rosenwater says:

C R Rangachari… claims that off his first ball to Bradman, when his score was 2, a catch was edged to the slips. Amarnath’s lumbago was supposed to be why it was not held. When Bradman was out for 201…(he) sought out Rangachari in the dressing room to congratulate him on having bowled ‘like a Trojan’…

A Genius

Rosenwater says in his final chapter:

Let us accept that verdict – as astonishing man. Sir Donald Bradman, at least as a player was a genius, which is a convenient word to express admiration for someone whom we cannot explain or understand.

I fully agree with him.

The Wild Life of India – E P Gee

I wrote on Facebook yesterday that Indians are the world’s worst book lovers. The reason was that I found to my horror it was exceedingly difficult to get a copy of E P Gee’s classic, “The Wild Life of India”. Even the National Digital Library of India doesn’t list his book, I found to my frustration, during my searches. Believe it or not Flipkart takes him to be a brand of Desi Ghee! It is our eternal shame that this book is not in print.

When I was young, which was quite long ago, my hero was Jim Corbett and his exploits. The Wild lives were meant to be hunted and killed, even though that was not the message of Corbett. Also, my knowledge of the Indian wildlife was confined to elephant, lion, tiger and leopard. We used to discuss excitedly about 18 foot long Vengai (must be a sort of a cheetah) which was supposed to have lived in the vicinity of Kalakaad hills during my grandfather’s time. My visits to the zoos were hurried affairs and emaciated animals in cages never induced curiosity in me. All these changed when I happened to come across ‘The Wild Life of India’. It was for the first time that I found a book that covered the entire India and its wildlife treasure. What attracted me most was the photograph of the wild asses of Rann of Kutch. Used to docile domestic asses, I found the very idea that asses could be wild thrilling.  Many years afterwards I learnt that Gee had in fact wrote a scholarly article for the Cambridge University.

In his words: I tried to photograph one of these solitary ones by remaining hidden in a thorny thicket while the others of the party tried to drive the animal towards me. Several attempts ended in dismal failure, for the animal each time cleverly made off in another direction. Inevitably I had a feeling that I was the ” ass ” and that the wild animal I was trying to capture on film was an alert and astute creature!”

When he counted the asses in 1962 their number was 870. Today, the population of wild asses is around 4500.

The book has a foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru. Coincidentally, the book appeared in the year he died. Nehru says in his foreword that the animals would not think much of us either and we could be considered by them much more dangerous than they could ever hope to be. Nehru also says more sanctuaries should be the answer and our agricultural practices should aim at intense cultivation rather than ever-expanding cultivation. E P Gee says in his book that at the turn of the 20th century India had about 40000 tigers. In his time it dwindled to about 10% of that number. Even today, our tiger population is around 3000. It came close to extinction later the population plunging to around 1400.

My love with the North East started after reading the Chapter ‘The Rhino of Kaziranga’ in his book. Gir forest, Kanha and Periyar lakes became my dream destinations. When I visited Jatinga, the site where birds were seen to plunge to earth in an apparent attempt of suicide, I remembered that it was Gee who first spoke about this phenomenon.

Gee was a tea planter who later became a conservationist. He was among the famous trio of conservationists – Salim Ali, M Krishnan being the other two. It was Gee who is credited with the  discovery Golden Langur.  Gee travelled to Jamduar, Assam with his team in 1953 and recorded many sightings of this elusive species little known even to the local people. The langur came to be known as Gee’s Golden Langur or Presbytis geei.

Let me read a passage from his book – his encounter with a rhino.

‘We had not gone more than a hundred yards when there was a noise nearby and with a panicky ‘Rhino coming’. Both my men, who were aged about twenty, disappeared down the tract, seemingly breaking all Olympic records. At their age I could have run faster. But I knew that a rhino can soon catch up with the fastest of humans. However, I also started to try and escape… After about ten yards, I did the best possible thing I could have done. I slipped and fell down, flat on my face, with the rhino very close at hand. I knew that an Indian rhino, unlike a wild elephant, will not continue to attack on a fallen victim, and I quickly rolled sideways off the track into the grass and remained perfectly still. 

The rhino thundered past.’

Gee says: ‘the arm-chair reader living in a city may perhaps be invited to reflect that a tiger has a right to live and that to do so it must kill some live animal about twice a week, that wild herbivores animals in the forests have become scarce, so a tiger will come out and kill domestic stock anyway.’

This was true then and this is true even now.

The Little World of Don Camillo -Giovanni Guareschi

There was a time when I was reading a Don Camillo book almost every other day. I was then deeply interested in politics and most of my friends and mentors – to the immense anger of my father – were hardcore Communists. Few of them had heard of Don Camillo books. The others who did lacked the basic sense of humour to appreciate it. Believe it or not, used books then could be bought for just one rupee. There was also a period when Penguin (if I am not wrong) came out with cheap book editions when classics were selling for one rupee. I was basically interested in Don Camillo books because the events in them took place in a bourgeois democratic country where the Communists were very strong. We were all then sure of Communists posing a strong challenge to the Congress Government.

The prestige of the Communist party, Soviet Union and Stalin, was at its highest in the years immediately following the Second World War. After the fall of Mussolini in 1943, the Communists organized resistance against the Nazis in a big way and the Communists participated in every Government from 1944 to 1947 with Comrade Togliatti serving  as the Deputy Chief Minister. The main party however was the Christian Democratic Party and naturally their relationship with the Communists was uneasy, though initially somewhat friendly. The Party broke with the Communists (and Socialists) in 1947, thanks to Harry Truman, but Communists were a force to contend with until 1976 when they won about 35% of the popular votes in the elections.  

More than fifty years after his death, the author of these novels, Giovannino Guareschi continues to remain a part of the Italian collective imagination as a consummate humorist, storyteller, editor, satirist, and journalist. Indeed, he is the most translated Italian author of the twentieth century, with more than twenty-five million copies of anthologized Don Camillo stories sold worldwide. Such is the fame of Don Camillo

The two primary characters in this stories are Don Camillo, a burly Catholic priest who is always ready for fist-fights, boxing contests and even using a gun when required and  and his constant antagonist Peppone, the village mayor, who is equally hefty and a good match for the priest. The stories take place during the height of the Cold War in a small rural  Italian town.

Don Camillo is a strong-willed but wise priest constantly at odds with the cunning Communist Mayor Giuseppe Peppone Bottazzi. Both priest and mayor share a deep concern for the well-being of their village’s citizens, but differ over what’s best for them.

Peppone  makes fiery speeches praising the virtues of the Communist party while vilifying the non-communist reactionaries, who he thinks are vermin. Don Camillo, on the other hand, considers Communism, the religion of the very Devil.

In the books, the Communist Party happens to be the principal and often only political party in the Italian town. Don Camillo feels a responsibility to be not only the town’s religious leader, but also the opposition political functionary. And, even though the two bicker constantly in public, the reader will immediately be able to sense a certain secret respect between Priest and Mayor.

The third important character in the book is Jesus Christ. Don Camillo frequently consults with Christ on the Crucifix for help and guidance, and the reader is witness to these wonderful, amusing conversations. Christ, with exceptional tolerance, offers direction and, more than often, gentle reprimands for Don Camillo’s intolerance. But at times, Camillo emerges the winner.

The Communists in the novels breathe fire on political platforms but they attend mass and baptize their children.

Let me give you some feel of the novels.

This is a conversation between the Lord and the priest.

“ Lord, let me beat him up for you!” “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said the Lord. “But, Lord, you can’t trust a red! Let me at least hit him with this candle!” “NO,” scolds the Lord, “Your hands were made for blessing.”  Lord, my hands were made for blessing but not my feet!” And he uses his feet.

Listen to this:

What do you wish to name this child?, he asked Peppone’s wife.

“Lenin Libero Antonio”, she replied.

“Then go and get him baptized in Russia.”

After a contest of fist fight, in which the Lord  sides with Camillo, Peppone is defeated and he agrees to change the name of the child.

“What am I to name him?”
“Camillo Libero Antonio”

“No, We name him Libero Camillo Lenin. Yes, Lenin. When you have Camillo around such folks as he are quite useless.”

On another occasion, when the Lord tells Camillo not to carry a gun, he says airily , ‘Nothing can defeat good Conscience, Don Camillo.”  

“I know, Lord, but the trouble is people don’t fire at the conscience but between the shoulders.”

I can go on and on.

After all these years, I agree many of the episodes read contrived, but the overall charm is still intact. I would like youngsters to pick the first book and if they like what they read they should read the rest of the set. As for me, the books will always appeal to me because they imagine situations when communism can coexist with religion, each secretly respecting the other.

The Gun, the Ship and the Pen – Linda Colley

Today, I am going to talk about a book which has just come out. The book’s name is The Gun, The Ship and the Pen written by Linda Colley. It has got some rave reviews, and deservedly so. It is a one of its kind book and it speaks about the evolution of Constitutions all around the world. Normally such a book will make a turgid reading, but Linda’s style makes the book extremely interesting and readable.

Whenever we think of a constitution, we think of noble ideas, the idea of liberty, fraternity and equality and the idea of the rule of law, the idea of individual freedom and the extent of it and several others. In reality, constitutions arose not exactly because the humanity had suddenly turned noble and democratic, but mainly because there were always wars and invasions looming and the rulers had to assure their citizens that if they won the war or frustrated the invaders, they would forever be good boys – and girls – and the written constitutions were sort of written bonds of such assurances. The rulers most of the times never kept their promises, but, once made, the constitutions had an uncanny knack of staying alive in one form or the other.

Linda takes a magisterial survey several such constitutions that came up in the period between mid-18th century and the outbreak of the first world war. While doing it she has made some brilliant portrayals of some of the outstanding personalities of the 18th and 19th century who shaped the world of ours. Most of these constitution makers were not legal experts. They were politicians, philosophers and soldiers and persons from other walks of life but they all tried their hand in constitution making. Here is her portrayal of Jeremy Bentham.

 Born in 1748, the son and grandson of successful London attorneys, and precociously brilliant, he himself had been trained in the law. Inheriting a comfortable income and the large house at Queen’s Square Place saved him, however, from having to work at a profession. Instead, he used his freedom and lifelong bachelordom to write, completing ten to twenty pages of script daily, and keeping himself going with hot spiced gingerbread and black coffee, his own version of jogging, and a select stream of politically and intellectually engaged visitors and correspondents from multiple countries and continents. Attacking with his pen a panoply of topics – economics, education, crime and punishment, the ethics and iniquities of empire, the rights of animals and, secretly, the legalisation of homosexuality – Bentham, like so many other politically obsessed men by this stage, also applied himself to studying and drafting constitutional projects.

The book has several nuggets of fascinating information. Do you know that Catherine the Great of Russia showed a great interest, much more than an absolute monarch would show, in the framing of a constitution for Russia? Do you know that the tiny island of Pitcairn in the Pacific was the first place in the world to enfranchise women? Do you know that the 1820 Cadiz Constitution of Spain was dedicated to Raja Rammohan Roy?

Before I read this book, I didn’t know that the American Constitution was drawn in great secrecy. I know about the famous parchment of it which is now at a shrine in the Rotunda of the National Archives Museum in Washington DC attracting millions of visitors every year. Yet, in terms both of the immediate domestic impact of this constitution and its influence outside the United States, something more critical occurred in Philadelphia on 17 September 1787 than its formal communication to parchment. That same day, a copy of the draft constitution was handed over to two printers, John Dunlap, by birth an Irishman, and David C. Claypoole, a native of the city.

Revolutionary army veterans both, these men were the joint proprietors of the first successful American daily, The Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser. On Wednesday 19 September, having trailed its appearance in advance, Dunlap and Claypoole published the draft constitution in full on their paper’s front page. By late October, the text had featured in over seventy other American newspapers. At least 200 different printings had appeared by the end of the year. Well before this, extracts from this constitution had also filtered into newsprint, pamphlets, books, magazines and broadsheets in countries and colonies far outside the United States.” This was the power of print. No wonder, every country wanted a constitution  -Pitcairn, Haiti, Corsica, Liberia, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, China, Russia and several other countries came up with their constitutions in this period.

As Linda shows, advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males, constitutions frequently served the ruling classes to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, however, these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the White Circle seeking to resist European and American Colonial powers.

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For instance, Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian peninsula caused a great damage both to men and property. But it was he who was instrumental in making the  Bayonne Constitution of Spain. It was Napoleon who helped to foster the spread of written constitutions into the length and breadth of South America, and the spread of knowledge of them into parts of south-east Asia. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte,’ testified a Mexican patriot in the 1820s, ‘to you Spanish America owes the liberty and independence it now enjoys. Your sword struck the first blow at the chain which bound the two worlds.’ This has the uncanny resemblance to the Dalit experience with the British. Yes, the British did a great damage to India but many Dalits considered their influence liberating. Just as Napoleon had no inkling that his efforts would have such effects, the British till the very end, never really thought that they would be liberating the Dalits, socially speaking,  though their interaction with the Dalits lasted for centuries.

In the United States, too the Reconstruction Act  of 1867 was passed with great fanfare but ended in a grim failure. Nonetheless, the Civil War indisputably altered, if not conclusively shattered, the mould. The liberating amendments passed in the wake of this war remained intact in the text of the American constitution. The Republican senator for Massachusetts, Charles Sumner called these amendments a ‘sleeping giant’. In the future, they could be made to wake and to stir again. The architect of emancipation, Abraham Lincoln, was never forgotten by the oppressed. In Linda’s words, “Ambedkar was a dalit, one of India’s caste-based ‘untouchables’. This was one reason why Lincoln and the reforming results of the American Civil War were compelling points of reference for him, to a degree that they were not for more affluent and patrician Indian nationalists such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Ambedkar wanted a constitution that would make the new India fairer and more egalitarian, not simply independent and politically democratic. The examples of Lincoln, America’s Civil War and the subsequent constitutional shifts which for a while had promised to transform the lives of excluded Blacks, possessed for him therefore a particular resonance.”

As  Linda quotes, Thomas Jefferson put it in 1802: ‘though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally & recall the people’

Please don’t miss this book.

Goodbye to All That – Robert Graves

Goodbye to All That – Robert Graves

From today onwards, I am going to introduce to my friends the books I have read and remembered. I hope to do it every day or at least every other day, until I feel exhausted! I hope to continue until I reach the one-hundredth book. The list, as it is personal, will be idiosyncratic, and since my memory is not always reliable, I will make use of the reviews and comments available on the net, if required. The list will include both fictional and non-fictional works.
Though wars are fought by humans, its canvas is hardly human. Its sheer size and dimensions suffocate whatever human in it. But now and then, a writer emerges who looks at war as a human being, as one who has participated in it, and tries to lend breath to the human side of the war. If he or she has the necessary literary skills, the work becomes a classic. Robert Graves’s ‘Goodbye to All That” is one such work. Though it had and still has its detractors -Siegfried Sassoon, the famous poet of the first world war was one of them-the work, autobiographical in nature, has become a classic right from 1929, the year in which it was published. The First World War changed the entire world, but the changes in Europe and Britain were swift. It plucked the people from the sedate and sure world they were living in and hurled them into the searing furnace of uncertainty. Every value – religious, social, political, artistic, and sexual – came to be questioned. Above all, patriotism became a word of derision and contempt, as it was in its name that millions of youngsters were sent to death. The book of Graves is about this period. It is unpretentious and stark and it doesn’t hesitate to plunge the dagger deep when it is required. The average life span of a soldier on the front was about three months by which time he was likely either to be killed or wounded or, as the author’s following narration describes, to have committed suicide. “As I went towards company headquarters to wake the officers I saw a man lying on his face in a machine-gun shelter. I stopped and said: ‘Stand-to, there.’ I flashed my torch on him and saw that his foot was bare. The machine-gunner beside him said: ‘No good talking to him, sir.’ I asked: ‘What’s wrong? What’s he taken his boot and sock off for?’ I was ready for anything odd in the trenches. ‘Look for yourself. sir,’ he said. I shook the man by the arm and noticed suddenly that the back of his head was blown out. The first corpse that I saw in France was this suicide. He had taken off his boot and sock to pull the trigger of his rifle with his toe; the muzzle was in his mouth. ‘Why did he do it?’ I said. ‘He was in the last push, sir, and that sent him a bit queer, and on top of that he got bad news from Limerick about his girl and another chap.’”I first read the book in the late sixties. I borrowed it from the MDT Hindu college library, a treasure-house of books. I read it again a few years ago. It hasn’t staled. If you like the book, please remember to read Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth”She was about 20 when the war started. She loses her fiancé, her brother, and two of her closest friends in the war. The Guardian rightly says, when it writes about the book to mark the 80th year of its publication, “In Testament of Youth, the words seemed to pour out of her, a potent mixture of rage and loss, underpinned by lively intelligence and fervent pacifist beliefs.”Anyone who has a romantic attachment to war should read these two books (I am counting them as one!), and there is every chance that the person will instantly be cured of the romance.

ஐஐடி சென்னை – உண்மை என்ன?

அரவிந்தன் கன்னையன் ஐஐடி சென்னையில் நடக்கும் சாதியம் குறித்து ஒரு நீண்ட கட்டுரை எழுதியுள்ளார். விடுதலை அதை மறு பிரசுரம் செய்யும் என்று நம்பலாம். “ஆமக்கா பப்படத்துக் காரி பார்வதியின் அத்தை மகள் அப்படித்தான் சொன்னா அன்னைக்கி” என்று புதுமைபித்தனின் வரிகளை நினைவுறுத்தும் வகையில் அவர் சொன்னார் இவர் சொன்னார் என்று கட்டுரை முழுவதும் இருக்கிறது. ஐஐடி சென்னையும் மற்றைய ஐஐடிகளும். அறுபது ஆண்டுகளுக்கு மேல் இருந்திருக்கின்றன. அவற்றிலிருந்து ஆயிரக்கணக்கான மாணவர்கள் படித்து உலகம் முழுவதும் சென்றிருக்கிறார்கள். அவற்றில் நடந்தவற்றை அங்கொன்றும் இங்கொன்றுமாகப் பிய்த்து எது வேண்டுமானாலும் எழுத முடியும். கேட்டை மூடி விட்டார் என்பதற்காக ஐஐடியில் சாதி இருக்கிறது என்று சொல்ல முடியுமானால், அருட் தந்தைகள் சிலர் வன்புணர்வு செய்கிறார்கள் என்பதனால் கத்தோலிக்க மதமே வன்புணர்வை தூக்கிப் பிடிக்கிறது என்று சொல்ல முடியும். கானடாவில் பல்லாயிரக்கணக்கான குழந்தைகள் கத்தோலிக்க நிறுவனங்களால் கொல்லப்பட்டு புதைக்கப்பட்டன என்ற தகவல் வெளிவந்துள்ளது. அதை வைத்துக் கொண்டு கத்தோலிக்க மதமே குழந்தைக் கொலைகளை ஊக்குவிக்கின்றன என்று சொல்ல முடியும். ஆனால் அப்படிச் சொல்வது கடைந்தெடுத்த முட்டாள்தனமாகத்தான் இருக்கும். மேலும் உலகின் எந்த கல்வி நிறுவனத்தின் மீதும் இது போன்ற குற்றச்சாட்டுகளை வைக்கலாம். சமீபத்தில் ஹார்வர்ட் பல்கலைக் கழகத்தின் மீது அது இன வேறுபாட்டைக் கடைப்பிடிக்கிறது என்ற குற்றச்சாட்டு வைக்கப்பட்டது. அந்த வழக்கை விசாரித்த நீதி மன்றம் வழக்கைத் தள்ளுபடி செய்தது. ஐஐடிகளின் மீது அவதூறு பரப்புபவர்களுக்கு கடுகளவாவது நேர்மையிருந்தால் அஜந்தா சுப்பிரமணியம் சொல்லியிருக்கிறார் என்று மேற்கோள் காட்டக் கூடாது. அஜந்தா சுப்ரமணியத்தின் புத்தகம் முழுவதும் இவர் சொன்னார் அவர் சொன்னார் என்று இருக்கிறதே தவிர உருப்படியான புள்ளி விவரங்கள் ஏதும் இல்லை. உதாரணமாக ஐஐடி மெட்ராசில் இன்று வரை படித்து வெளிவந்தவர்களில் பிராமணர்கள் எத்தனை மற்றவர்கள் எத்தனை போன்ற புள்ளி விவரங்கள் வேண்டும். ஐஐடிகள் அரசு ஆணைகளுக்கு உட்பட்டு இயங்குகின்றன. ஐஐடிகள் அரசு ஆணைகளை மீறி சாதிப் பாகுபாடு காட்டுகின்றன என்றால் நீதிமன்றத்தில் பொது வழக்குத் தொடர வேண்டும். வழக்கில் வெற்றி பெற்றால் ஐஐடிகளை மூடச் சொல்லுங்கள். குறிப்பாக சென்னை ஐஐடியை. இப்போது ஐஐடி சென்னையைக் குறித்து எழும் அவதூறுகள் நாஜி ஜெர்மனியில் யூதர்களுக்கு நடந்தது போல பிராமணர்களை அழித்தொழிக்க முடியவில்லையே, அவர்கள் ஒட்டிக் கொண்டிருக்கும் ஒன்றிரண்டு கல்வி நிறுவனங்களிலிருந்து விரட்ட முடியவில்லையே என்ற ஏக்கத்தில் எழுவது. அவற்றைப் பிடித்துக் கொண்டு அரவிந்தன் தொங்கிக் கொண்டிருப்பது ஆச்சரியம் அளிக்கிறது. பிராமணர்களையும் யூதர்களையும் ஒப்பிடக் கூடாது என்று அரவிந்தன் சொல்கிறார். இது போன்று நான்கு ஐந்து கட்டுரைகள் வரட்டும். திராவிட இயக்கத்தின் அப்பட்டமான இனவெறிக்கு சாமரம் வீசுவது தொடர்ந்து நடக்கட்டும். என்ன ஆகிறது என்று பார்க்கலாம்.

இனி உண்மையான புள்ளி விவரங்களுக்கு வருவோம்.

ஐஐடி சென்னையில் மொத்தம் 10072 மாணவர்கள் படிக்கிறார்கள். இவர்களில் பொதுப் பிரிவில் இருப்பவர்கள் 5208 பேர்கள் பட்டியலினச் சாதியைச் சேர்ந்தவர்கள்- SC -1223, பழங்குடியினர் 502, பிற்படுத்தப்பட்டவர்கள் 2828, மற்றவர்கள் 301. பொதுத்தேர்வின் மூலம் மாணவர்கள் சேர்க்கப்படுகிறார்கள். எனவே மாணவர் சேர்க்கையில் தகிடுதத்தம் நடக்கிறது என்று சொல்ல இயலாது. 10072 மாணவர்கள் படிக்கும் ஒரு நிறுவனத்தில் ஒன்றிரண்டு உதாரணங்களை எடுத்துக் கொண்டு கயிறு திரிப்பது எந்த அளவில் நியாயமாக இருக்க முடியும்? மேலும் இது போன்ற குற்றச்சாட்டுகள் எழுவது பொறியியல் பிரிவுகளிலிருந்து இல்லை. இவை பொருளாதார, சமூகவியல் பிரிவுகளிலிருந்தே எழுகின்றன என்பதையும் நாம் கணக்கில் கொள்ள வேண்டும்.

இனி அங்கு வேலைபார்க்கும் ஆசிரியர்கள் எத்தனை என்று பார்ப்போம்.

அறிவிக்கப்பட்ட ஆசிரியர் இடங்கள் -1000

இப்போது இருக்கும் ஆசிரியர்கள் – 597.

அதாவது 40 சதவீதத்திற்கும் மேல் ஆசிரியர் இடங்கள் காலியாக இருக்கின்றன. இதற்குக் காரணம் தகுதியுள்ள ஆசிரியர்கள் கிடைக்காததுதான். நிலைமை எல்லா முன்னிலை ஐஐடிகளிலும் இதே போன்றுதான். கரக்பூர் 1390 -722. கான்பூர் 835-462. தில்லி 776-653. இவை அனைத்தும் ஜனவரி 2021 புள்ளி விவரங்கள். இடங்களை உயர்சாதியினரை வைத்து நிரப்ப அரசும் நினைக்கவில்லை. நிறுவனங்களும் நினைக்கவில்லை. எனவே ஐஐடிகள் இட ஒதுக்கீட்டை கடைப்பிடிக்கவில்லை என்பது மிகக் கேவலமான, அருவறுக்கத்தக்க பொய்.

அஜந்தா சுப்ரமணியம் சொல்கிறார்:

……by bracketing out historically accumulated advantages and disadvantages, the notion of meritocracy, like that of a color-blind society, has come to service the reproduction of inequality. Although meritocracy as a principle continues to animate calls for equalization, the divergence between its ideal meaning and its social life should call into question the assumption that meritocracy is indeed a leveler of opportunity.

தகுதி என்றால் என்ன என்பதைப் பற்றிய விவாதம் எல்லாத் தளங்களிலும் நடக்க வேண்டும் என்பதில் எனக்கு எந்த மாறுபட்ட கருத்தும் இல்லை. எந்த அளவிற்கு அதைத் தூக்கிப் பிடிக்க வேண்டும் என்பதைத் தீர்மானிப்பது சமூகமாகத்தான் இருக்க முடியும். ஐஐடிகள் நம் சமூகத்தில் ஓர் அங்கம் அவை தனித்துச் செயல்பட வேண்டும், குறிப்பாக சென்னை ஐஐடி தனித்துச் செயல்பட வேண்டும் என்று எதிர்பார்ப்பது மூடத்தனம்.

ஜெய் ஹிந்த் முழக்கத்தின் வரலாறு

நம் எல்லோருக்கும் ஜெய் ஹிந்த் சொக்கத்தங்கம் சுபாஸ் போஸ் கொண்டு வந்தது என்பது தெரியும். இதற்கும் செண்பராமன் பிள்ளைக்கும் எந்தத் தொடர்பும் இல்லை. அது எப்படிப் பிறந்தது என்பதின் வரலாற்றை நான் சுருக்கமாகச் சொல்கிறேன்.

சுபாஸ் போஸ் ஜெர்மனியில் 1941-43 ஆண்டுகளில் இருந்த போது நான்கு முக்கியமான நிகழ்வுகள் நடந்தன.
முதலாவது சுபாஸ் போஸை எவ்வாறு அழைப்பது என்ற சர்ச்சை. ராஷ்ரட்ரபதி என்று அழைப்பதா? அல்லது பிரதான்ஜி என்று அழைப்பதா? ஒரு ராணுவ வீரர் ஹமரே நேதா என்று அழைத்தார். அதையே கொஞ்சம் மாற்றி நேதாஜி என்று அவர் அழைக்கபப்ட்டார். நேதாஜி என்ற பட்டம் ஃப்யூரர் டுசே போன்று சர்வாதிகாரத்தை நினைவுறுத்தும் பட்டம் அல்ல. அது மரியாதையும் அன்பிற்கும் உரிய அடையாளம். இன்று நேதாஜி என்றால் சுபாஸ் போஸ் என்பது குழந்தைகளுக்குக் கூடத் தெரியும். இந்தியக் குழந்தைகளுக்கு. அது அவருடைய தியாகத்திற்கு இந்தியா தந்த பரிசு.

இரண்டாவது கொடி. நமது மூவண்ணக்கொடிதான் இந்திய லீஜனின் கொடியும். ஆனால் நடுவில் ராட்டைக்க்கும் அசோக சக்கரத்திற்கும் பதிலாக பாயும் புலி – ஆங்கிலேயருக்குச் சிம்ம சொப்பனமாக இருந்த திப்புவை நினைவு கூறும் வகையில்.

மூன்றாவ்து தேசிய கீதம். அவர்களது கீதம் ஜனகனமண! ஆச்சரியமாக இருக்கிறது அல்லவா? சுதந்திர இந்தியா தேர்ந்தெடுத்த கீதம் முதலில் நேதாஜியால் தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்பட்டது. வந்தே மாதரம் பாடலை விட சாரே ஜஹா சே அச்ச பாடலை விட இதுதான் உயர்ந்தது என்று அவர் தேர்ந்தெடுத்தார்.
நான்காவது ஒருவரை ஒருவரை வரவேற்கும் முறை. நேதாஜி கூடவே இருந்த அபித் ஹாசன் சொல்வதைக் கேளுங்கள். “One day I heard some Rajput soldiers greet each other with Jai Ramji ki – a phrase that had a musical quality. I changed it to Jai Hindustan Ki. This did not quite work, but the abbreviated form Jai Hind sounded perfect, and Netaji enthusiastically embraced it as India’s national greeting.

எனவே ஜெய்ஹிந்த் என்பது விடுதலையின் முழக்கம் மட்டுமல்ல. இந்து முஸ்லிம் ஒற்றுமையின் முழக்கம்.

நாம் இன்று ஜனகண மண பாடும் போதெல்லாம், ஜெய்ஹிந்த் என்று சொல்லும் போதெல்லாம் போஸ் போன்றவர்கள் இந்தியாவிற்காக கண்ட கனவு நினைவாகி வருகிறதா அல்லது பொய்த்துப் போனதா என்பதை நினைவில் கொள்ள வேண்டும். அதே சமயத்தில் பெரியார் தலைமையில் இயங்கிய நீதிக் கட்சி வெள்ளைக்காரர்களின் காலணிகளைத் துடைத்து வந்தது என்பதை நினைவில் கொள்ள வேண்டும். திரு ஸ்டாலின் நாங்கள் நீதிக் கட்சியின் பாதையில்தான் செல்கிறோம் என்று சொன்னது தற்செயல் அல்ல. நீதிக் கட்சிதான் தமிழ்நாடு தமிழருக்கே என்ற முழக்கத்தையும் திராவிடநாடு திராவிடருக்கே என்ற முழக்கத்தையும் கொண்டு வந்தது. அவர்கள் வழித்தோன்றல்களான திமுகவினருக்கு ஜெய்ஹிந்த் பிடிக்காததில் எந்த வியப்பும் இல்லை.

போஸ் 1943ல் சிங்கப்பூர் சென்றது அது INAயின் (இந்திய தேசிய ராணுவம்) முழக்கமாக மாறியது.

இரண்டாம் உலகப்போருக்குப் பின் நமது தலைவர்கள் சிறையிலிருந்து வந்ததும் ஜெய்ஹிந்த் முழக்கம் சூடு பிடித்தது. இந்திய தேசிய ராணுவ வீரர்களைக் கைது செய்து அவர்கள் மீது தேசத் துரோக குற்றம் சாட்டப்பட்ட போது தேசமெங்கும் அது ஒலித்தது.

ஆனால் காந்தி தெளிவாக இருந்தார். இது ராஜ்மோகன் காந்தி சொல்வது:

Mahatma Gandhi opined that forcing even one person to shout Jai Hind is like putting a nail into the coffin of ‘Swaraj’. In his view, such act of forcing people to shout Jai Hind is like once again killing millions of Indians who could not speak,” he said.

நேருதான் அதை விடுதலை பெற்ற இந்தியாவின் முழக்கமாக மாற்றினார்.

The most famous speech in independent India, Jawahar Lal Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’, uttered at midnight on August 15, 1947, also ended with the salutation ‘Jai Hind‘. Nehru repeated this from the ramparts of the Red Fort the next day too, which was unusual for a slogan that had been coined just a few years earlier.

நாமும் காந்தி சொன்னதையேதான் சொல்கிறோம். யாரையும் ஜெய்ஹிந்த் என்று சொல்ல வற்புறுத்த முடியாது – அரசுப் பொறுப்பில் இருப்பவர்களைத் தவிர. அதே நேரத்தில் ஜெய்ஹிந்த் முழக்கத்தை அவமானப்படுத்துபவர்களை விமரிசிக்காமலும் இருக்க முடியாது.

மேலும் ஜெய்ஹிந்த் இந்தியாவிற்காக போஸ் தலைமையில் உயிர் விட்ட பல தமிழர்களின் முழக்கம். ஜெய்ஹிந்த் முழக்கத்தை அவமானப்படுத்துவது தமிழர்களை அதுவும் விடுதலைப்போர் தியாகிகளை அவமானப்படுத்துவதாகும். திமுகவிற்கு அப்படிச் செய்வதில் எந்தப் பிரச்சினையும் இல்லாமல் இருக்கலாம். ஆனால் காங்கிரசிற்கும் கம்யூனிஸ்டுகளுக்கும் பிரச்சினை இல்லை என்றால் அவர்கள் திராவிட அடிமைத்தனத்தில் ஊறி மரத்துப் போய் விட்டார்கள் என்றுதான் பொருள்.

யார் மிரள்கிறார்கள்?

திரு ஸ்டாலின் ஒன்றியம் என்ற சொல்லைக் கேட்டு மிரள வேண்டாம் என்கிறார். உண்மையில் இன்று மிரண்டு போயிருக்கிறவர்கள் திமுகவினர்தான். பதவிக்கு வந்து விட்டோம் ஆனால் நமக்கும் அதிமுக அரசிற்கும் எந்த வித்தியாசமும் தெரியவில்லையே என்று மக்கள் கருதி விடுவார்களே என்ற பயத்தில் அவர்கள் மக்களைத் திசை திருப்பும் வேலையில் இறங்கியிருக்கிறார்கள். திரு ஸ்டாலின் மத்திய அரசோடு இயைந்து செயல் படுவோம் என்று சொல்லியிருந்தாலும் திமுகவின் பிரச்சார பீரங்கிகள் பிரிவினை என்று மிரட்டுகிறார்கள். இது மக்களைத் தூண்டி விடும் செயல். பிரிவினை வாதம் தலையெடுத்தால் மத்திய அரசு கையைக் கட்டிக் கொண்டு கண்டு கொள்ளாமல் இருக்காது. மோதல்கள் ஏற்பட்டால் அதில் இழப்புகள் தமிழ்நாட்டிற்குத்தான் அதிகமாக இருக்கும். இலங்கையின் வடக்குப் பகுதியில் இருக்கும் தமிழர்கள் இழந்ததை விட பல மடங்குகள் இழக்க நேரிடும்.

நான் மீண்டும் சொல்கிறேன்.

இந்தியாவைப் பிரிக்க யாராலும் முடியாது. மேடையில் வெத்துவேட்டுப் பிரச்சாரம் செய்பவர்களால் அது முடியவே முடியாது. பேச்சு அதிகமானால் தேசத்துரோகச் சட்டத்தில் உள்ளே போக வேண்டியதுதான். திமுக அரசு ஐந்து வருடம் ஆட்சி செய்து மக்களுக்கு நலம் செய்ய வேண்டும் என்று திரு ஸ்டாலின் நினைக்கிறார் என நானும் எண்ணுகிறேன். அதை இது போன்ற திசை திருப்பல்கள் இல்லாமல் அவர் செய்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும். கட்சியிலும் வெளியிலும் அதிகம் துள்ளுபவர்களை அவர் அடக்கத்தோடு பேசச் சொல்ல வேண்டும்.

இனி அரசியல் சட்டத்திற்கு வருவோம்.

India that is Bharat shall be a Union of States என்று அது சொல்வது உண்மைதான். ஆனால் எது states என்பதை உறுதி செய்யும் உரிமை நாடாளுமன்றத்திற்குத்தான் இருக்கிறது. நாளைக்கே தமிழகத்தில் பிரிவினை வாதம் தலையெடுத்தால் ஆட்சியை கலைத்து ஆளுனர் ஆட்சியைக் கொண்டு வந்து மாநிலத்தைப் பிரிக்க முடியும். உதாரணமாக சென்னை நகரத்தை பாண்டிச்சேரியைப் போன்று யூனியன் பிரதேசமாக அறிவிக்க முடியும். தமிழகத்தைக் கூறு போட முடியும். இதுதான் சமீபத்தில் காஷ்மீரில் நடந்திருக்கிறது. இப்படிச் செய்தது சரியா, தவறா என்பது வேறு விவாதம். ஆனால் இப்படிச் செய்வதற்கு மத்திய அரசிற்கு அதிகாரம் நிச்சய்ம் இன்றைய அரசியல் சட்டத்தின்படி இருக்கிறது என்று அரசியல் சட்ட வல்லுனர்கள் கருதியதால்தான் பாஜக இந்த முடிவை எடுத்தது. தமிழ்நாட்டில் நிலைமை சீர் குலைந்தால் அதே முடிவை மத்திய அரசு எடுக்க முடியும் என்பதுதான் இன்றைய உண்மை. இது மத்திய அரசை ஒன்றியம் என்று பெயர் மாற்றி அழைப்பதால் பொய் ஆகி விடாது. எனவே இச்சிறுபிள்ளைத்தனமான விளையாட்டை திமுக நிறுத்திக் கொள்ள வேண்டும். நீங்கள் ஒன்றியம் என்று சொல்லிக் கொள்ளுங்கள். என்னைப் போன்றவர்கள் மத்திய அரசு என்று சொல்லிக் கொள்கிறோம். இது கூச்சலில்லாமல் நடந்தால் எந்தப் பிரச்சினையும் இல்லை.

திமுக உண்மையில் செய்ய வேண்டியது என்ன?

மாநிலங்களுக்கு அதிக அதிகாரங்கள் வேண்டும் என்ற கொள்கையை நானும் வரவேற்கிறேன். ஆனால் அது இந்தியா பிரிய முடியாத ஒரே நாடு என்ற அசைக்க முடியாத அடிப்படையில் இருக்க வேண்டும். எங்களுக்கு அதிக அதிகாரங்கள் வேண்டும் இல்லையென்றால் பிரிந்து விடுவோம் என்ற மிரட்டல்களில் இருக்க முடியாது. தங்களை விட மிகப் பெரிய அளவில் மத்திய அரசால் மிரட்ட முடியும் என்பதை திமுக என்றும் மறந்து விடக் கூடாது. முதலில் திமுக முன்னுதாரணமாக மாநிலத்திடம் குவிந்து இருக்கும் அதிகாரங்களை நகராட்சிகளுக்கும் பஞ்சாயத்து அமைப்புகளுக்கும் தேவையான அளவு பிரித்துக் கொடுக்க வேண்டும். கொடுத்த பின், திமுக முன்னின்று என்னென்ன அதிகாரங்கள் மாநிலங்களுக்கு தேவை என்பதை வரையறுக்கும் ஆவணத்தை மற்றைய மாநிலங்களோடு ஒருங்கிணைந்து தயாரித்து மத்திய அரசிடம் அளிக்க வேண்டும். அவை அனைத்தும் உடனடியாகக் கிடைக்காது. ஒன்றொன்றாகத்தான் கிடைக்கும். சில கிடைக்காமலே போகலாம். அதற்குத் தயாராக இருக்க வேண்டும். அரசியல் அதிகாரங்களை மளிகைக்கடையில் பொருட்கள் வாங்குவதைப் போல வாங்க முடியாது. இது தன்மானப் பிரச்சினை அல்ல. தன்மானம் என்று குறுங்குழு இனவாதம் பேசும் முட்டாள்கள் மட்டுமே பேசுவார்கள். இது மக்களாட்சி எவ்வாறு இயங்க வேண்டும் என்பதைப் பற்றி மத்திய அரசும் மாநில அரசும் சேர்ந்து பேசி முடிவு செய்ய வேண்டிய பிரச்சினை. அவசரப்பட முடியாது. உள்நாட்டுப் போரை விரும்புபவர்களே அவசரப்படுவார்கள்.

திமுக நிச்சயம் போரை விரும்பவில்லை. அது அமைதியை விரும்பும் கட்சி என்றுதான் நான் நினைக்கிறேன். ஆனால் அவசரப்படுவதாகத் தோன்றுகிறது. அவசரத்தால் நேரும் இழப்பு கட்சிக்குத்தான் இருக்கும். அதை திரு ஸ்டாலின் விரும்ப மாட்டார் என்று எண்ணுகிறேன். எனவே கட்சிக்குள் பிரிவினை வாதம் பேசுபவர்களை கட்சியே ஒடுக்க வேண்டும். உளறும் பத்திரிகையாளர்களை எச்சரிக்கை செய்ய வேண்டும். செய்யவில்லையென்றால் மத்திய அரசு தலையிடும் நிலமை வந்து விடும்.