Ketaki Kushari Dyson

Ketaki Kushari Dyson is one of our most valued members. She was born in Calcutta in 1940 and educated at Calcutta and Oxford. She has been based in England since her marriage to an Englishman in 1964. She writes in both Bengali and English, and in a diversity of genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, essays, criticism, literary translation, and research-based works. She has published six full-length collections of poetry in Bengali and three in English. Her first play was premiered in Bengali in Manchester City of Drama 1994 and toured England and Wales in 2000 in her own English translation. Her Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1991) is a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. In 2003, OUP (Delhi) published Selected Poems of Buddhadeva Bose, another book of translations by her. She has written three novels and three plays? Her last novel, Jal Phunre Aagun, was published in 2003 by Ananda Publishers.

Her research-based books include a study of the journals and memoirs of the British in India in 1765-1856; the relationship between Tagore and the Argentine woman of letters, Victoria Ocampo; and a study, done jointly with other scholars, of the effects of protanopic colour vision on Tagore’s writings and art. Her second play was staged in Calcutta in January 2002. She has received the Ananda Puraskar twice and the Bhubanmohini Dasi medal of the University of Calcutta for her contribution to Bengali letters. For a full list of her published books visit her website at http://www.ketaki.dyson.dial.pipex.com . (Courtesy of Parabaas)

Ketaki Kushari Dyson's Contributions to Uttorshuri

Thoughts on Democracy, Secularism, and Religious Fanaticism

Some Reflections on the Art of Taslima Nasrin

A Response to Taslima Nasrin's Poem

Poem: Spring Show, March 2003

Was Tagore sectarian?

Information on the Selected Poems of Buddhadeva Bose

Unicode and Bengali software

Seeking literary advice

[The following article, published in the anthology Bruised Memories: Communal Violence and the Writer, edited by Tarun K. Saint, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2002, needs a brief note to clarify its textual history. It is essentially based on a Bengali article I wrote in 1993 for a special issue of the Calcutta magazine Jijnasa which was planned in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Mosque. A short time after that Tarun K. Saint of Delhi asked me to contribute something for his projected volume on communal violence and the writer. I translated into English the Bengali article which had been published in Jijnasa and added some extra comments. I would ask readers to kindly remember that the English article reached its present shape not recently but in the mid-nineties, though hopefully its contents continue to be relevant. It subsequently took Tarun K. Saint a long time to find a suitable publisher for the projected volume, but eventually Seagull of Calcutta agreed to undertake its publication. I would also like to point out that though the book gives 2002 as its year of publication, it was actually published in 2001. I mention this as someone once suggested in another e-network that Seagull rushed to publish the book after the Gujarat massacres. That is not correct. The book was published ahead of schedule in the autumn of 2001.]

In response to a request for a contribution to this volume, I shall first translate from the Bengali an article I wrote in 1993 for a special issue (14: 3) of the Bengali quarterly journal Jijnasa which was devoted to the topics of secularism, democracy, and the politics of religious fanaticism. I shall then offer some additional comments. First, here is a translation of the 1993 article.

‘Democracy’, ‘secularism’, ‘fundamentalism’ – all three concepts have reached India via English words. Let us therefore remind ourselves of the sources and associations of the same. Of those three words, the meaning of the first is likely to be the least controversial. ‘Ganatantra’ is now the universally used synonym for ‘democracy’ in Bengali, though there is scope for detailed discussion on how the democratic process can be made more acceptable, widespread, developed, and refined. Though the word ‘democracy’ is basically an inheritance from the Greek language and civilization, we have become used to giving it a more substantial definition than was done in the past. Today we would call a system democratic only if within it sovereign power is vested not in a particular group but in the people at large, where people rule themselves either directly or through elected representatives. Viewing the entire body of citizens, irrespective of colour, caste, creed, class, and gender, as co-sharers of sovereign political power is a very recent phenomenon. Those who have studied the histories of different countries know how, through several stages of evolution and after many battles, we have reached the modern concept of democracy. It was only the other day that women were brought within its ambit. And we have to remember that though widely accepted, the concept is by no means universally accepted throughout the globe.

The English adjective ‘secular’ is very old, descended from the language and tradition of Latin Christianity. That which does not belong to the Church, is not eternal in a Christian sense, is temporal, of this world, is called ‘secular’. The concept of secularism established itself only after a considerable struggle with institutional Christianity. According to the dictionary, the use of the noun ‘secularism’, to refer to a doctrine, dates from the middle of the nineteenth century, and mainly in the following sense: a viewpoint which holds that the policies of a human society ought to be decided on the basis of what is good for it in this world, not on the basis of a faith in God or in another world. As an offshoot of this doctrine, the word acquired its second significance: a view which holds that a national programme of education ought to be ‘secular’. Though these two concepts of ‘secular’ and ‘secularism’ have been acquired by Indians from the English language, these concepts have not reached their fullest possible status even in the homeland of that language. In times of crisis, we humans tend to succumb to a siege mentality, and even some intellectuals may begin to believe that the problems which they see around them belong to their particular geographical regions only, when the adoption of a broader perspective would reveal to them that the same problems, or at least comparable ones, were cropping up elsewhere as well. Such a realization not only helps us to avoid feeling an excessive degree of guilt or panic, but may also show us new alternatives for action. With this in mind, let me present some relevant information from the UK.

Though higher education is secular here, secularism is not yet a well-established principle in school education. This is because the state here is not yet fully secular in principle. It is still yoked, in a slightly uncomfortable way, to the Church of England. The tie has not been formally dissolved. The sovereign is not only the head of the state, but also the head of the Church. In the state school system available to all, ‘religious education’ is compulsory, though it is not compulsory to sit an exam in it. Though this ‘religious education’ is usually viewed from a Christian perspective, yet it must be observed that on the whole in ‘mainland’ Britain this is done in a loose way. This is because religion is no longer a big issue to Christians in this region. Though the UK is officially a ‘Christian state’, in reality the religious faith of most people in ‘mainland’ Britain, including the teaching community, is very slack. Pukka church-going Christians are now a minority in the nation. As a result, the compulsory religious education classes in state schools easily become lightweight sessions: listening to stories from the Bible, having fun putting on nativity plays, and so on. In areas where there are substantial communities of immigrants from South Asia, with large numbers of children from Muslim, Sikh or Hindu families, teachers do try to teach this particular subject in a ‘multicultural’ perspective. There are also schools run by Roman Catholic and Jewish communities, which belong to the school network and receive state support. In such institutions children can receive religious instruction appropriate to their particular faiths alongside their ‘secular’ studies. This privilege which Catholics and Jews have obtained for themselves has become, in our times, a source of disquiet on two fronts. First, there is the lack of peace in Northern Ireland. The separate schools of Catholics and Protestants in that territory fuel the political purpose of keeping alive a cultural difference between the two communities. Many hold the opinion that the problems of Northern Ireland cannot be solved as long as Catholics and Protestants there go to separate schools. Secondly, there is the demand for equal rights in this respect among the orthodox Muslims of mainland Britain. They say: ‘We too want separate schools at the expense of the state.’ This demand is also, of course, political. The Catholics and Jews of mainland Britain who run their own schools do not have a strong political agenda when they do so, that is to say, they are not trying to preserve any uniqueness of social customs or culture which is geared to a definite political purpose. But when orthodox Muslims demand separate schools, that demand does have an affiliation to a political purpose. This is because they wish to keep themselves apart from the mainstream flow of Western culture. For instance, they are against co-education, against girls attending school with uncovered heads, against the free mixing of the sexes, and so on. Hints are given that the ultimate goal of this desire for autonomy may well be to demand a separate electorate. This in turn gives rise to a reaction, to extremist groups spitting fire against immigrant communities, and in the context of economic recession and unemployment fuels hatred of a racist, fascist nature against the minorities. What I am trying to point out is that though this society has accepted the principle of secularism in many other areas of life, such as in the process of parliamentary democracy, in the judicial system, in universities, factories, workplaces, the failure to adopt it wholeheartedly in school education continues to act like a chink in its armour.

I do not know how many people remember the root-meaning of ‘secularism’ when discussing the issue in an Indian setting. Secularism crystallized in opposition to a view of life that is Church-centred, God-oriented, looking towards the next world. If we had to give it a Bengali name we would have to call it ‘ihalokavad’ or something like that. In the history of thought secularism is really a fellow traveller to humanism and communism. It is because of this affinity with humanism and communism that a country like Britain has not been able to accept secularism fully. Though these various ‘isms’ began their lives as aspects of the same adventure, their paths diverged, and they did not become one great journey. When the independent Indian state began its march, what did its leaders understand by secularism? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think on the whole we took it to mean a neutrality of the state machinery in respect of religion. The exclusion of religious education from state schools and colleges was for us a part of that system. The partition of the country gave the business a symbolic shape. ‘Those who believe in the messy relationship of religion and state go to that side, and we who believe in a secular state remain here’ – that was the line of thinking. Generally speaking, our generation eagerly accepted the twin ideals of democracy and the impartiality of the state machine in respect of religion. But it should not surprise us at all that though there was a theoretical acceptance of these things, realizing them in practice in independent India would depend very much on experiments.

Words like ‘fundament’ and ‘fundamental’ are derived from Latin, but the widespread use of the noun ‘fundamentalism’ in mass media is a very recent phenomenon. The word has emerged from a Christian background, and not so long ago either – from the twenties of the present century. ‘Fundamentalism’ is the name given to an orthodox, literalistic faith in the ‘fundamental’ tenets of Christianity. It is as an extension of that kind of fundamentalism that one speaks of Islamic or Hindu ‘fundamentalism’ in our times. Personally, I dislike the way the English word ‘fundamentalism’ is used. I also dislike the word coined for it in Bengali, ‘maulavad’, and I never use it myself. I think the degradation of a useful adjective like ‘fundamental’ is a matter for regret. Similarly, ‘maula’, to mean ‘radical’ in a positive sense, is an indispensable adjective in Bengali. Only the other day, people were happily talking of ‘maula manavtantra’ to mean radical humanism. And now, within a short space of time, ideas have turned such a somersault that ‘maulavad’ is the nickname given to a negative attitude. Such somersaults in the meanings of words militate against clear thinking, because words like ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘maulavad’ carry no negative clues on their bodies, nothing to tell us why they should be regarded as bad doctrines. I am in favour of keeping the word ‘maula’ in its root-sense, to mean ‘radical’ in a positive sense. I would like to be able to say that So-and-so is a ‘maula’ thinker (in a good sense). I want to retain the use of this adjective when I say: ‘To solve this root-problem, we have to adopt this radical measure.’ We need to keep this valuable adjective in a positive sense. Twisting positive words and turning them into negative words is a form of crookedness which blocks rational thinking. The degradation of the word ‘liberal’ in leftist circles is an example. If we reckon that it is an advantage to be able to think radically, if we are proud, not ashamed, of our ‘roots’, if ‘fundamental’ science or research is deemed desirable in scientific circles, then it is irrational, unaesthetic, a form of intellectual indigestion to give the label of ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘maulavad’ to a way of thinking which we regard as undesirable. Just because the Western media are doing it, must we copy them and imitate the same indigestion? That is a slavish mentality. There is a tendency to copy blindly and re-apply in the Indian context any English word that becomes trendy in the media, without understanding its historical origins. Such a habit creates mists, stops us from thinking clearly. The word ‘fundamentalism’ is only applicable where there is a foundation of ‘fundamental’ tenets of faith, on which an intense conservatism rears itself. Where no such foundation exists, the application of this word is mere verbiage. Those who wish to criticize the extreme, aggressive expressions of any religious belief should use unambiguous terms like ‘dharmandhata’ or ‘dharmonmattata’ (‘religious fanaticism’ or ‘religious bigotry’ in English perhaps) – terms carrying their negative implications on their own bodies.

I imagine that article after article in the present issue of this journal will repeat the propositions that India badly needs to keep democracy and secularism alive, to refine and extend democratic and secular processes, to shun religious fanaticism whole-heartedly. These are desiderata not just for India. Many of us think that if any human group in today’s world wishes to be thought of as ‘civilized’, it must have democratic institutions, its state machinery must maintain an impartiality in religious matters, it must shun religious bigotry. The impartiality of the state machinery in religious matters seems to us to be an indispensable condition for modern democracy, because nearly every state will have within its borders some religious minority, however small, and so without a religiously neutral state machine it will not be possible to establish equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of whether they belong to the majority community or the minority community. In truth, apart from a few exceptions, a modern state which has too homogeneous a population rouses legitimate suspicions – how on earth did it become so homogeneous, was it by exterminating minorities? The world has now shrunk a great deal. We are all having to survive cheek by jowl. People are migrating in large groups from one country to another. Some are refugees, uprooted from their roots. Others have migrated for a better living, in search of a better way of life. Large numbers of people have become expatriates for one reason or another. If, in such a situation, different human groups do not learn the arts of coexistence and co-operation, it is simply not possible to avoid unrest. It is necessary for us to learn the arts of peace, of friendship and fraternity, both within a state and in dealings between different states. We have to strengthen international co-operation; no state can have the permission to carry on human sacrifices within its borders in the name of sovereignty.

I guess the main purpose of this issue of the journal is to discuss religious fanaticism. There can be no doubt that differences between religions and between sects under the same religious umbrella is one of the main threads of dispute between communities. Seeing the wild things that are sometimes done in the name of religion, the rational mind will often make the spontaneous exclamation: ‘Let religion go to hell! We don’t need it at all!’ Yet it cannot be denied that even if we were to cast aside everything about religion that was external, trivial, or accidental, there would still remain, in the source from which religion springs, an aspiration which is fundamental to the human psyche – a need to come to an understanding with this mysterious universe. Human beings are bound to be driven by questions such as where we have come from, why we are here, and what the purpose of this creation can be. Trying to grapple with such questions, man has developed various religious beliefs and has become homo religiosus. ‘But,’ some will say, ‘these are philosophical questions.’ That is true, but religion flows from the same source. The two branches of activity originate from the same basic human inquiry, and there is a large area where they overlap. For this reason, the differences between men generated by their religious affiliations cannot be lightly brushed aside when we start to debate the issues. It is a kind of ideological conflict. We have to catch the bull by the horns.

Intellectuals can help by coming forward and doing more work, from a rational, historical perspective, in comparative religion and other related disciplines. In schools and colleges across the world the humanities are today an unjustly neglected field. And of course we are having to pay a price for it. Valuable progress had been made earlier in this century in the path of mutual understanding between different religions, but it now seems more like an abandoned enterprise. People seem to lack the right effort, inspiration, and confidence for the task. Scholars are more interested in fattening themselves than in expanding knowledge. On one side we have the statistics of various killings, on the other side are our attempts to earn money, ears alert to the clamorous announcements of the see-saws of the marketplace. In between there are a few dark predictions about what is to come. This is more or less the capital, relying on which men journey from one day to the next. In such a journey few care to listen to what the great and the good have said or to read great poetry, few are interested in creating lasting beauty, few have the patience to follow words of good sense, few have the time to probe the past or to evaluate the present. So many seem so uninterested in having a dialogue with the next generation, so lacking in enthusiasm about it, that it scares those of us who were reared in an idealistic age. But if we cannot speak words of hope to those who are younger than us, if we cannot leave for them any habitable ground of goodwill, then all our pride in our sophistication is in vain, and all our conferences and seminars are in vain.

We must not forget that religious differences do not constitute the only or principal reason for conflicts between men. If a homogeneous creed could unite men, Pakistan would not have broken apart, Christians would not have fought amongst themselves in an un-Christian manner, nor would a Kurukshetra have been waged in that ancient India of which Hindus are so proud. When there are quarrels in the name of religion, we have to take the works apart and examine in detail what other moving parts are operating therein; we have to place all the quarrels in a larger perspective, or else we cannot hope to solve any of the problems. To use a phrase just used before, when we grasp the bull firmly by the horns we realize that ideological conflicts do not stand on their own but are inextricably meshed with power-struggles, with crude or subtle clashes of interest which rend a country asunder, make burning-grounds of towns and hamlets, exterminate an entire generation, or induce psychosis in the minds of an entire generation. That is to say, supposing for a minute that we could bake all the people of this world on the heated griddle of the same institutional religion, we are likely to find that after two days of peace and quiet, the rotis have started a fight on the morning of the third day in an undying clash of interests. How we can minimize such conflicts, take the poison out of them: that surely is the tough test, the heavy responsibility which human society, bloated in sheer numbers, faces today. There is a new discipline called ‘conflict studies’, and it seems to me that religious strifes have to be seen within some such framework. Religious quarrels are not all that different from clashes which occur in the name of language, colour, or caste. Even the battle of the sexes for equal rights is being fought within such a framework, which is why it generates so much heat.

It is because a clash of interests is involved that we cannot get rid of communal conflicts simply by giving vent to idealistic regrets. Every society has to rear a leadership rich in human understanding; it has to nurture a few people who will acquire a special expertise, the skill to mediate between the quarrelling factions. Such personalities are the real guarantors of secularism within a society. What is dangerous is the gap that begins to yawn when such a leadership, rich in wisdom and skilled in delicate negotiations, is lacking. Thorny weeds will, of course, grow happily in any such gap. I am talking of the situation within a society.

At the same time, no country is totally isolated. In the present century we have known in our bones how unreal it is to expect that any country can be made a safe haven by drawing a boundary-line on a map. ‘The troublemakers who believe in the messy relationship of religion and state go to that side, and we good boys hang on to secularism and stay this side’ – this is an arrangement that may possibly work out in the short term, but can never succeed in the long term. For nets of interest and power-struggles are world-wide. There will be politics of religion in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran, and the principle of secularism will stay put in India like rasgullas on a thali: such a state of affairs can never prevail. To make secularism safe we have to make the entire subcontinent secular, and to make the subcontinent secular, in the end we have no option but to make the whole world secular. This earth is our true workplace: anything less just won’t do. Otherwise no matter how assiduously you oil your machinery, someone else is bound to put a spanner in the works. In the long run, not until the Islamic civilizations regain their self-confidence and attain worldly successes vis-à-vis the high-achieving Western nations can the ‘Hindu-Muslim’ problem of the Indian state be truly solved. Turns of history take long stretches of time to reveal their meanings. When snatches of dialogue in Spanish vie with English in reaching our ears in New York City, one suddenly wonders: are Spanish-speakers wiping off, at long last, the humiliation of the defeat of the Armada? Likewise, the Jewish-Arab conflict is clearly not at an end, and Christians and Muslims are still fighting on European soil. In a sense the fire of the Crusades hasn’t been quenched yet. It is really not all that surprising that the prospects of long-term communal harmony in the Indian state, with its large Muslim population, should be mortgaged to that state of affairs. It cannot be expected that the world-wide phenomenon of pan-Islamism will not have an impact on India. Needless to say, this statement is not being made in defence of any stupid act of destruction, but in the belief that when probing contemporary events, our analyses have to be realistic.

Without a doubt, we have to acquire greater finesse in the analysis of group psychology. The arrogance of colonial masters is easily criticized. It is relatively easy to spot this arrogance, and if one fights it, one wins accolades from bystanders pretty easily too. But to admit within one’s own side, or to detect in a rival’s side, that poverty of spirit that crystallizes within a nation from the humiliation of defeat or a long-standing inferiority complex, congeals into vengefulness, rancour, and fascism, and then to come to grips with it, to impede its progress: all these are far harder and messier tasks. We don’t feel like doing such jobs as a group, which means that in the end we have to pay dearly. When something really does catch fire, when religious fury or fierce nationalism adopts extremist tactics and erupts as terrorism, all – men and women, the young and the old – become its victims.

In his editorial in the 14: 1 issue of Jijnasa the editor lamented the lack of knowledge about each other that the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent tended to betray. We surely must try to remove that ignorance, for we now live in a multi-cultural environment, not only in the subcontinent, but throughout the world, and if we don’t have information about each other’s culture we simply impoverish ourselves. Besides, only those who have intimate knowledge of different cultures can build effective bridges between them. Only from amongst such personalities can leaders emerge, leaders who are capable of mediating in quarrels. However, in order to make our analyses realistic in the context of the recent outbursts of communal violence, let me add a few more comments on this subject.

Mutual ignorance may be a barrier to active friendship, but why should it engender violence? We are all partly gregarious, partly anxious to guard the borders of the self. The inhabitant of a modern city frequently does not know his neighbour well. He knows the face, maybe he knows the name, perhaps greets him too when he sees him, but he does not know his neighbour’s intimate business. My neighbour may not know my intimate business, but I still expect him to help me if I knock on his door when I am in trouble, and I also expect that he will never set fire to my house. I may not be very intimate with my neighbour, but I have no right at all to set fire to his house. Hence when ignorance erupts as violence, we must understand that some other piece of gadgetry has become operative in the interaction.

But why is there so much ignorance anyway? These days it is no longer necessary to be a bookworm to acquire some information about each other. People all over India are now coming nearer one another thanks to the expansion of the mass media, especially television. Both communities, Hindu and Muslim, are well represented among the popular movie stars of Bombay. Tourists from all over the country congregate to see the famous monuments. Amongst such buildings there are both temples and mosques, the constructions of both communities, and some displaying the united streams of craft traditions. There are artists, too, from both the communities amongst all those singers whose songs the public love to hear. In such a situation there is no excuse for ignorance at all. In truth, there never is any excuse for ignorance. Even when we do not have a great deal of information about people of another faith, we always know quite well at least this much about them: that they are human like us, have hands and feet like ourselves, and so on. Those who believe in God should surely see more clearly than others that the same God created us all. There really should not be any such thing as religious intolerance. And yet there is. This is the paradox. That same intolerance judges some to be ‘heathen’, some to be ‘mleccha’, some to be ‘kafer’. In the long run, the way to go beyond such a divisive frame of mind is not the acquisition of specialized knowledge about others, but the admission that others and ourselves share a common humanity. Humanism is surely the best remedy against religious fanaticism.

That the educated people of the two communities, Hindu and Muslim, should move closer towards each other through greater mutual knowledge is always a desideratum, but we must remember that mutual knowledge by itself cannot prevent mutual violence. When a man ruins his own kinsman, he usually does so with full knowledge of his kinsman’s intimate affairs. The cruellest acts of oppression and intimidation are perpetrated within a family, inside the family home, where the members possess detailed knowledge of each other. So to prevent the fires of communal hatred it is necessary to have a clearer understanding of how the various parts of the machinery of collective violence actually move.

For instance, if we cannot manage to keep democracy and the state’s impartiality in matters of religion together, we are likely to wreck the boat. Autocracy is a simple procedure. Announcing ‘Why will you move? The law will move!’ [a quotation from Tagore’s Tasher Desh], we can post armed policemen or soldiers at street-corners and maintain ‘law and order’ without any hassle. But democracy is a complex, chaotic procedure. It has to reach an understanding with many different kinds of opinion, be agreeable to a diversity of people, cut a path through all kinds of compromises and states of disorder. Deliberately inciting hatred between communities in order to gain electoral victory, playing one community against another, bargaining with minorities: such tactics of party politics can tear the fabric of secularism to shreds. In such a situation the very process of party politics becomes an enemy of secularism (and of true democracy). We are returned to power-struggles and clashes of interest. At such a time even if the intellectuals of the communities have mutual knowledge, the masses can become victims of malicious propaganda.

Sibnarayan Ray [the editor of Jijnasa] has expressed regret that the Hindu elite of West Bengal no longer cultivate skills in Arabic and Persian, as Rammohan Ray did, or study in depth the literary achievements of Bengali Muslims, though many Muslim readers in Bangladesh read the works of Hindu writers with care. This regret of his is certainly sincere as well as legitimate, but I would call it a little unrealistic. Rammohan was the pioneer of a new age, standing at the end of another age when thanks to Muslim rule, Persian had been the court language and Arabic the scriptural language of the rulers. That age came to an end, and the Bengal Renaissance turned its face towards English, the language of the new masters. Men oriented themselves towards the cultivation of English in order to earn a living through it and to get to know Western thought at the same time. The old loyalty towards Arabic and Persian could scarcely be expected of that elite of a new age. In due course, in order to assert themselves against colonial rule, Bengalis took pains to develop their mother tongue, but the need to learn English did not go away. Nor do I see any chance of that need being obviated. English is at present the darling language of the pan-Indian elite, installed in the seat of the ‘shuo-rani’, the king’s favourite queen. The other Indian languages are in the position of the ‘duo-rani’, the neglected queen of fairy tales. While English is ‘pan-Indian’, the other languages are merely ‘regional’. The British have left, so there is no longer any great need to assert cultural identities through the mother tongues. The height of global supremacy that English has now attained, mainly thanks to the power of the United States of America, had not been reached even during the high noon of the British Empire. English is now the Number One global language, the language of international mass media, marketplaces, sciences and technologies, all linked together by electronic communications. It is natural that the pan-Indian elite should desperately wish to acquire skills in this language, for with its help they can seize many opportunities and wrench many privileges for themselves at home and abroad. Never mind Arabic and Persian, the Indian rich do not take care to teach their children their mother tongues. If all of a sudden it so happened that the role currently being played by English was being played by Arabic or Persian, boys and girls from the affluent homes of Delhi-Bombay-Calcutta would most certainly hurl themselves onto the task of acquiring Arabic or Persian. The growing indifference of the pan-Indian elite classes towards self-_expression in the modern Indian languages helps communalism. The elite classes are happy with their English-medium culture. Communalism may be irrelevant to them. The hot oven of the mother tongue encourages communalism in the less affluent. The two cultures do not understand each other’s language.

Men in East Bengal turned towards Bengali for reasons similar to those which once upon a time compelled the elite of new Bengal to devote themselves to the development of their mother tongue: first to assert their identity firmly against Pakistani rule and subsequently for the assertion of their national identity. To claim the literary heritage that was rightfully theirs, they started to study with care texts ‘from Charyapadas to Jibanananda Das, from Bankimchandra to Buddhadeva Bose’ (to quote Sibnarayan). But did this endeavour really spring from an urge to understand Hindus? I would rather say that it happened in a great wave of self-exploration. A new urban middle class has appeared over there. Swept by the currents of a new, emotional nationalism, the intellectuals of modern Bangladesh have thrown themselves into the service of Bengali. Hence there is over there a new restlessness of spirit in respect of language. Reading books written by Hindu authors is part of that programme. But nationalism is necessarily an ambiguous and volatile sentiment. We may gain from it; at the same time it certainly also harbours hidden dangers. If for the survival of the languages and cultures of modern India each region needs to have its own, separate nationalism, a sovereign state, a flag, a national anthem, and an army, then the future is indeed bleak. In such a scenario we are likely to witness a plurality of Bosnias in the bosom of the subcontinent. Unlucky Bosnia – although she is a part of the continent of Europe, the lessons of the Second World War were useless for her. The year 1917 saw the publication of Tagore’s lectures on nationalism: his strong protest, marked by originality, against competitive nationalism based on sovereign states. It is this vision of Tagore’s that is far-seeing. We mustn’t forget that liberation for future generations lies not in an excess of nationalism but in crossing over to an international frame of mind. As in the continent of Europe, so in the Indian subcontinent, there has to be a sadhana of unity-in-diversity which flourishes in some form of joint enterprise.

The new self-consciousness that has appeared in Bangladesh over the issue of language is certainly an offspring of the new situation that has arisen there. Things are different in West Bengal, where there is a different set of problems. The two Bengals differ in their situations and scenarios. In the same issue of Jijnasa (14: 1) Sibnarayan says that ‘West Bengal has been ruined by the partition’. This claim can give rise to much controversy, for which we have no space here. But I would say that in a comparative discussion of the two Bengals the _expression of such extreme despair about West Bengal does not seem objective to me: it seems subjective, driven by emotion. The way in which West Bengal has given shelter to innumerable people uprooted from East Bengal, helping them to re-establish themselves and hold their heads high – is that not a remarkable event of social history? After the division of the country a major part of West Bengal’s energies went into the task of standing upright again, with a strong midriff, with all the refugees who had flooded in. Although dealt a terrible blow, she was not smashed into fragments. Nor did she get completely sucked into the vortex of the Naxalite movement. If these things had really happened, would we have been able to discuss the present subject in a journal published from Calcutta in a totally open manner? Is this freedom of speech no achievement at all? I am personally grateful to West Bengal and Calcutta for having sustained me as a writer in the Bengali language even from a distance, even after I had become an expatriate. In the language of anthropology writers like myself are called diaspora writers. Because I am a woman, my case has an added significance from the viewpoint of social anthropology. When I started my career as an expatriate writer, the women’s movement which gained ground later had not yet consolidated itself. It is to the western side of Bengal that I am indebted for encouragement given to my literary identity in that situation, for nurture as a diaspora female writer. Those who gave me this help were all male intellectuals; this would not have been possible without a progressive attitude on their part. No backward community can do this. Hence my ‘feminism’ and the ‘feminism’ of a writer like Taslima Nasreen are somewhat different; we started from different beginning-points.

I consider the analysis offered by Sm Gauri Ayyub in her article “Which Bengal? Who is a Bengali?” (Jijnasa, 13: 4) to be very relevant. I agree with her entirely when she says that there is no conflict between being Bengali and being Indian. And I would add: there is no conflict between being Bengali and being human in the widest sense. She is quite right when she says that it is for the people of West Bengal to judge and decide whether they are Bengalis or not, whether or not, living in a small state within India, they can preserve their Bengali identity. Why should they listen to the dictates of others in such matters? As she says, ‘personality is capable of both expansion and contraction; it is expansion that is a sign of civilization, contraction being a sign of barbarism.’ She is also right when she says that as regards Bangladesh, West Bengal’s relative indifference is better than hyper-consciousness, and that some more time must pass, some of the old ingrained ideas, elements of hatred and mistrust must fade before the relationship between the two Bengals can become healthier. I have no doubt that future generations of men and women in West Bengal will one day do research on the literature and culture of Bangladesh. That time will come. If in the meantime a generation has kept such activities on hold, that is entirely in keeping with the process of history. These people needed the passage of time to recover after a terrible injury...

And let me say that there is a need for greater truthfulness on both sides if we want the relationship of the two Bengals to become healthy. I have written about this elsewhere, but as that has not been printed yet, let me say it here. Our grief for the partition of our land, our sense of irreparable loss is really a kind of bereavement, but we have not been allowed to express it properly. I was born in Calcutta myself, but our family roots are in East Bengal. Many of our near and distant relatives were uprooted. I was then seven years old. The appalling event made a deep gash on my mind. I have seen an entire generation suppressing their grief with dry eyes; I have seen them burning their boats. They knew they would never return to their homes again. They wanted to forget troubles and riots, to breathe an air free of communalism, as if after a major surgical operation. Certainly there was an element of escape in it. But there was tragedy too – at all levels. Those who have not gone through the experience of becoming strangers in their country of birth do not know how traumatic that experience is. In such a situation there was a need to forget. It was necessary for some water to flow down the river before a rapprochement was possible.

Such reconciliation is needed by some other communities in the subcontinent, such as the Punjabis and the Kashmiris. The identity of the subcontinent’s Punjabis is split in three. Is there any comparable attempt at mutual understanding between those three religious camps? I would like to know. The global media sometimes carry stories of the misfortunes of Kashmir’s Muslims, but the Hindus of Kashmir have been wiped off the narrative, as if they never existed. What is the chance of a dialogue between those two groups? Is there a favourable environment for it anywhere? I would like to find out about that too, for I don’t think there can be lasting communal harmony in the subcontinent if such sad issues are pushed under the carpet. Who are the people thinking about such things? As for the unremitting agonies of the minorities of East Bengal being articulated in their own voices in the recent past, I first heard such expressions in the New York Bengali magazine Parichay. It was the voice of the courageous writer Purabi Basu. After that I heard the voice of Ali Anwar in Jijnasa. We know of people working for Hindu-Muslim reconciliation in West Bengal and Bihar. They are our friends from this very journal [Jijnasa]. As courageous efforts of this kind gradually combine, there will be an accumulation of cathartic and self-constructive experiences; only then will it be possible to eradicate religious bigotry from the subcontinent and to establish true communal honesty. But unless we learn how to neutralize the hidden poison of power politics, we shall never usher in the good days simply through good wishes and good words. As it is impossible to do anything well unless one nurtures hope, I am an optimist. A happy future can be built only with the aid of our good sense and good deeds. It may be delayed, but I have faith that it will come.

That was the article in Jijnasa. I did not think there was any point in my discussing particular events (such as the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque) about which people on the spot had far more information than myself and which were being analyzed in detail by others. Nor had I yet read Lajja. The article is embedded in my expatriate life and reflects both the experiences of living in Britain as well as the perspective of someone who was shaped by the India of the years immediately before independence and the decade following it. Democracy and secularism, the state’s neutrality in religious affairs, tolerance and pluralism, a co-operative effort in building and developing the country: these were taken for granted in that world. But there were inherent instabilities and contradictions, hidden tensions and unresolved conflicts in the situation of that period. India could not go forward without coming to grips with those problems sooner or later. It is easy enough to say, ‘We never thought things would take this turn.’ But it is just as easy for others to insist: ‘We knew it would go this way; we told you so.’ The partition did not happen peacefully; there was a bloodbath. Not only had weeds been left in the soil which would sprout in due course, but also fresh blood-soaked seeds were sown which could not but sprout too. Besides, vastness and diversity in every possible sense being the hallmark of India, chaos (in the current scientific sense) and fluidity were only to be expected.

The experiences of the former communist worlds show us that religion as such cannot be suppressed. Places of worship can be closed down or destroyed, but religious belief then goes underground. In India we have seen how a practice such as sati can be banned, but the world-view that nurtures such a ritual can live on and be revived in full vigour at an opportune moment. Similarly, governments cannot make us secular or tolerant. Secularism as well as real religious tolerance take ages to get established within a culture. That is in the main a long-term educational process. On the other hand, what is easy for governments to do is to use religion in the game of politics. This is a dangerous game, but one that governments across the world, both democratic and autocratic, seem to love. It is also important to note that however well-established secularism and religious tolerance may become in the central areas of a reasonably liberal society, it is possible, if constant vigilance is not maintained, for religious extremism to take root in marginal areas and victimize the vulnerable. The growing persecution of Jewish and Hindu students at the hands of Muslim extremist groups in certain British academic campuses is a case in point.

The media have become extremely powerful in present times. They are deeply engaged in a country’s power-games. While we need freedom of the media to safeguard democracy, we are paying an increasingly high price for this freedom. The need to yoke freedom to responsibility has never been greater. In my article I had expressed my anxiety about the English-educated upper classes of modern India leaving the regional-language presses to their own devices, allowing them to become vulnerable to the flames of religious fanaticism. But now I gather that right-wing hindutva has become a feature of a section of the English-language print media too. The diverse ways in which the nexus between economics and print culture can operate need to be explored further.

Another angle from which these problems should be looked at is the Jung-ian angle. I find Jung’s concept of the psychic epidemic quite relevant. He says:

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. Under these conditions all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. (Jung, Selected Writings, ed. by Anthony Storr, Fontana paperback, p. 350.)

It is the mesh of all these factors in a social fabric in which the complexity is ever increasing that we have to grapple with. And any analysis of religious bigotry in India must take the whole of the subcontinent into consideration, for the subcontinent is in this respect a continuum, a network of interactive parts.

I have been reading the messages on Taslima Nasrin with considerable interest, and offer a few thoughts, for what they are worth. Lopa Tasneem has been asking me for some time to write something touching women’s issues, and hopefully this essay will be relevant in that way. Thank you, Lopa, for giving me the space!

It is true that Taslima generates contradictory emotions in those who read her or about her. No one can deny her courage in speaking her mind, and she has a very individual writing style in Bengali, recognizably her own. Her situation as an exile cannot be comfortable and elicits sympathy from most decent people; few except hardened bigots would deny her compassion. But by courting political exile she has indeed cut herself off from Bangladeshi grassroots, which means that she cannot put her talents to a more direct service of those social causes which some had genuinely hoped she would go on to serve.

It was her writings which had led people to foster that hope. After gaining fame as a promising young poet, she came into prominence as an outspoken columnist who was a champion of women’s rights and bluntly critical of the way religious orthodoxies oppress ordinary people, particularly women. Many thought that she would go on to play a role as an activist in those spheres. In this they have been disappointed, and I can well understand that disappointment, – especially the disappointment of those who feel that had Taslima stayed on in medicine, without necessarily giving up writing, had she combined the two activities into a two-pronged fork, she could have achieved so much more on behalf of women in a direct, tangible, solid way, – but at the same time I agree that it is not for us to tell her how she must live, and if she has decided that writing is going to be her sole or principal form of activism, then we just have to accept that.

Unfortunately, several of her books are banned in Bangladesh, which in itself limits her potential for activism-through-writing in her home territory. And there are some genuine problems for her in playing such a role in the English-speaking world. She is diffident about her English and does not write directly in it, though she is getting translated. I heard her lecture once, at an event organized (I think) by Amnesty International at Oxford, and it seemed to me that she did not have such a good grasp of the complexity of the history of the subcontinent in colonial times. Because she cannot write fluently in English, Taslima cannot become another Arundhati Roy. Be that as it may, Taslima is now a celebrity; she travels and attends events at libertarian venues; she may be exerting an international influence through such appearances, in addition to what she is achieving through the translated versions of her books.

In 1992 I was one of the first people to review her Nirbachito Column, welcoming her exceptional courage and candour. Her entry into the Bengali literary world was like a breath of fresh air blowing through it. My article was re-printed (without anybody obtaining my permission!) in a selection of articles for and against her, entitled Taslima Nasriner Pokkhe Bipokkhe, published by Ankur Prakashoni of Dhaka. My article is in fact the very first piece in that anthology. Taslima dedicated one of her later collections of columns (Nashto Meyer Nashto Godyo) to me, and says she respects me, a compliment which I accept with humility.

It is as a writer that we have to evaluate her, not as an activist. Within writing, she seems to excel in certain genres and to write less well in others. For instance, I would not call her a feminist intellectual. We do not see her writing in an analytical style, not even within the ambit of a magazine like Jijnasa, which used to have a primary focus on essays and did nurture quite a few female essayists. Taslima was made welcome there, and the editor has always been her champion. Yet Taslima never really became a fully-fledged feminist essayist or polemicist.

When Taslima was persecuted and had the fatwa put on her head, she was hijacked by the media. It became difficult for us to discuss her books from an honest literary angle. Certain sections of the media began to pretend that somehow she had invented Bengali feminism, that she was the first woman writer in Bengali displaying a true feminist consciousness. Some lip service might perhaps be paid to Rokeya Begum, but those that did so hurried on immediately from Rokeya to Taslima, without even mentioning, en passant, Ashapurna Devi or Mahashweta Devi, never mind anybody of a younger generation. Those of us who had been influenced by the new wave of feminist awareness ushered in by the seventies dared not open our mouths in case any criticism we made of any aspect of her writings was interpreted as personal jealousy of her media success. It became politically incorrect to criticize her, just as once it had become politically incorrect to criticize Salman Rushdie.

Personally, I think that the autobiographical or confessional mode, as evinced in the two volumes of her memoirs published so far, is Taslima’s forte as a writer. The most intelligent review of Amar Meyebela that I have seen so far, thanks to a posting in another e-forum, is that of its English version, written by Meredith Tax, an eminent American feminist, whom I happen to know. This was a much more balanced appraisal than any of the Bengali reviews that came my way.

However, a political agenda of the West is already visible in the edition that has been made available in America. Even the title betrays it. The American publishers of the book have released it under the title Meyebela/ My Bengali Girlhood/ A Memoir of Growing Up Female/ In a Muslim World. But the original title is quite simply Amar Meyebela, and the Indian edition of the English version, published from Delhi, is likewise titled My Girlhood/ An Autobiography. In the American edition the word ‘Bengali’ has been naughtily slipped in. This adjective serves a political purpose: it manages to stereotype us Bengalis, and robs us, those Bengali women who have not experienced a girlhood as damaged and damaging as Taslima’s, of our own reasonably normal, happy, and positive childhoods. The subtitle, ‘A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim World’, is even naughtier. Apart from the dangerous stereotyping of a Muslim upbringing, the phrasing, in juxtaposition with ‘My Bengali Girlhood’, almost erases the existence of non-Muslim Bengalis. This is a mischief that is rampant in Britain too. The word Bengali is being increasingly identified with a Muslim identity. Many ordinary people think that all Bengalis are automatically Muslims; Bengalis from West Bengal or Bangladesh who belong to other religious faiths have been obliterated from the map of their consciousness. I myself have not read the American edition of Amar Meyebela, but I believe there are some small but significant differences between it and both the original Bengali edition from Calcutta and the English edition from Delhi.

Where Meredith Tax says: ‘There is no adult consciousness in Meyebela; the voice is that of the child Taslima’, I would argue: ‘Yes, that is how Taslima purports to speak, but does she succeed?’ I think Ms Tax is nearer the truth when she says: ‘Taslima finds it hard to get her bearings, and the reader has the same problem: the narrative voice and time frame seem to tremble from time to time, like a lantern flickering...’

Let us look at a passage that Ms Tax quotes: ‘they lift the mosquito net and look at you, lust and desire pouring from their eyes .... Keep absolutely still when they flash a light on your face, your chest, your thighs. They must see that you are not yet fully grown, you are not even an adolescent, your breasts have not yet appeared!’ This is not a child’s testimony. It is the adult writer writing. The problem is acute in the original Bengali book, where the passages describing her experience of childhood sexual abuse do not ring as words spoken in a child’s voice. They are clearly written in an adult fictional technique, designed to grab the reader’s attention. I am afraid they have certainly had a titillating effect on a mass audience. People have been reading the memoir to scan those lurid passages, for the sake of the frisson they afforded. Is that what Taslima wanted?

Can an adult woman who has had a vigorous sex life since she grew up recreate with autobiographical authenticity those early unsolicited sexual experiences and the bewilderment they presumably caused? Can she give representation to the original viewpoint of a young inexperienced child? This is an interesting ‘post-modern’ question, because she has changed in the interim, hasn’t she? She is no longer the innocent bewildered kid; she is now full of the knowledge of men, a bitter knowledge, and the fire of anger against men. And she has a thesis to prove; she must show how bad men are, how they oppress women. The audience of a statement, and the purpose for which it is made, must always be taken into consideration. When writing Amar Meyebela, Taslima is not speaking to a counsellor or to the tape-recorder of a fact-finding mission. It is her own book that she is writing. She hopes, by means of her recollections, to give flesh and blood and bones to a book which will capture a market and establish her literary reputation. In the original Amar Meyebela it is not the innocent child’s voice that I hear, but the voice of a grown-up woman writing in a deliberate, well-considered, fictional style.

What I am trying to say is that Taslima did have a choice in the matter of styles. Let me explain. For ten years I was a member and research associate of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women at Oxford, and sat through many a seminar given by distinguished professionals drawn from diverse disciplines: historians, sociologists, social anthropologists, medical anthropologists, social workers and others from many parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. I was an editorial collaborator with social anthropologists, attended international conferences on women’s issues, and from time to time I still attend seminars on fertility, reproduction, and sexual health at the University’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. I have listened to the papers of many women, on subjects ranging from the condition of women in rural Bangladesh and contraceptive techniques amongst the tribal people of the Amazon basin to female circumcision in Africa, how in Saudia Arabia mobile phones enable women to talk to their boyfriends while in the same room a zenana party is going on, and how hard it is for young men to find brides in Singapore. I heard from NGOs working in Bangladesh how Taslima Nasrin’s books had made their own task of helping women in remote rural areas harder than before, because the local mullahs were now vehemently opposed to anything that might help to liberate women from their clutches. I have personal friends amongst scholars whose roots are in the Middle East, who have done field work in Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, and so on. From my accumulated experiences I can testify that there is another way to talk about these issues, a more calm and dispassionate way. As a qualified medical practitioner, a mature Taslima could have entered that realm of discourse, but she chose not to. She chose to write a literary autobiography instead.

As Ms Tax herself says, Taslima, in addition to her breaking of religious taboos, ‘opened the closet door on a whole world of subterranean sexual experience and feeling, much of it abusive, and none of it considered fit to be discussed. She wrote about sex and religion and state politics all together, and she did it at a bad time, when fundamentalism was on the rise. The combination did her in.’ That is a good summing up. She is also spot on when she says that the ‘fatwa put on Taslima Nasrin in 1993 must now be seen as an early warning signal that this globalized, politicized form of Islamic fundamentalism was growing more aggressive and looking for an opportunity to test its strength in Bangladesh.’

But where do all these things lead us? Sure, it is good to see the girl from Mymensingh up on the dais in New York, launching her book, and we may all feel a legitimate pride for her achievement, but let us not forget the West’s agenda in all of this. Ms Tax observes astutely that the coverage of the Western press is ‘a double-edged sword’. She knows that ‘Nasrin believes in being shocking’, that the book will become ‘a classic of controversy’, and she says further: ‘Nasrin thinks attacking religion will bring about a world change in consciousness. I have my doubts; perhaps the anger in Meyebela distracts me from its message. I keep wondering how much of this story can be reduced to the unresolved furies of a mistreated child.’ In my humble opinion, much of it does indeed have a deep connection with those furies. I too find it hard to believe that a head-on collision with religious authorities can bring oppressive structures down.

Ms Tax points out that ‘Meyebela will be problematic as an educational tool in the United States today, where people are constantly being told that Muslims are evil. In a society that knows little about any variety of Islam, the dark picture painted by Nasrin may be universalized, and welcomed all too eagerly.’ After September 11, is there not a real danger that there may be a cultural fallout from this kind of literary representation? Especially if Taslima keeps insisting, in the interviews she gives, that the sexual molestation of children goes on within every family in Bangladesh, but is not talked about. That just cannot be true, can it? Innocent Asian Muslims living in North America may well be demonized as a result of such statements. And when a group is demonized, there is an inevitable backlash. I always fear the chain of reactions that extreme opinions may unleash – not only in the West, but also in the subcontinent itself. The more religious bigotry rises in Muslim Asia, the more right-wing Hindu nationalism will rise in India in reaction, and this really makes many of us deeply worried about the future of communal harmony in the subcontinent, which is mortgaged to the global situation. So no matter how Taslima may try to wriggle out of her own responsibility in starting off such a chain reaction, this is a scenario that needs to be understood by cultural entrepreneurs such as publishers. Publishers should not just think of raking in the profits, when people’s lives may be endangered by certain kinds of statements, as happened after the publication of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Authors must accept some responsibility for the consequences of their words, just as motorists have to accept responsibility for accidents and injuries they may cause by bad driving.

There are aspects of Taslima’s writings which I find disturbing. The rage that burns in Amar Meyebela burns through her other books, her poetry and novels, and Utol Hawa, the second part of her autobiography, which I think shows her writing skills at their maturest. The two main targets of her rage are religion and men. Yes, I understand there is an anger boiling in her pot, but raw anger does not necessarily make good art. The raw passion has to be transmuted. There has to be an act of alchemical transformation, and some distancing from the original experiences. Taslima has written some fine poems, but the range of themes and styles in her poetic output is limited. She tends to say the same thing over and over again. In one of her poems she says that she would like to buy juicy young men in the market, use them thoroughly, ransack them, then ‘kick their crinkled balls’ and order them ‘to piss off’. It is a shocking poem. As the mother of two young men, I felt its ghastliness even more, and was impelled to write a poem which is a kind of reply. I am enclosing this poem of mine as a PDF file.

Taslima’s memoirs will always have an intrinsic value as books documenting a girl growing up in an extremely dysfunctional family in Bangladesh in the second half of the 20th century, but many of us cannot help wondering how her family have reacted to the way she has portrayed them. Yes, those books are banned in Bangladesh, but surely copies have been smuggled in and members of her family have turned the pages? Her father comes out as a violent man and a bully, whose neglect of his wife and cruelty towards her were criminal. But it wasn’t just Taslima’s domineering father who neglected his wife, the children of this marriage too sadly neglected the welfare of their mother. She wanted to carry on her studies and wanted a little support in this project from her children, but they ignored her requests completely. The poor woman was suffering from blood loss from the bowels, and everybody around her told her that there was no treatment for haemorrhoids. Nobody would help her, neither her doctor husband, nor her daughter who was studying medicine, nor her grown up sons. Eventually she died of bowel cancer. I have not understood one thing: if Taslima could go to Dhaka and treat herself privately with antibiotics when she contracted venereal disease from Rudra Muhammad Shahidullah, why could she not take the initiative and take her mother to Dhaka by train and arrange some treatment for her bowel condition? It is heart-rending to read how the poor lady begged pathetically to have some nourishing food to compensate for her blood-loss – a little milk, a few eggs – and it was not that the family could not afford it, but they simply paid no attention to her requests! This is unbelievable, and brought tears to my eyes when I read Utol Hawa. It wasn’t as if a famine was on and they were all begging in the street, or anything like that! Taslima states several times that in the parental conflicts she witnessed she tended to side with her assertive, authoritarian father rather than with her submissive, ill-treated mother. As a girl growing up, she modelled herself on her father, a figure who symbolized power, while her mother was a crushed, defeated being. I really do not know how the members of this family face themselves in the mirror. Do they feel guilt? (Taslima has indeed dedicated the first part of her memoirs to her mother, which I suppose is a ritual expiatory gesture.) No matter how else women are oppressed by their families in a traditional society, especially by their autocratic husbands, can it be typical for children to treat their mother in this careless, callous way? Is it not atypical? Social anthropologists will know that one case study does not validate a generalization about a whole society, and the story of this family is just that, one case study, that of a particularly brutal and brutalizing family, but really what kind of effect is it having on lay readers, on the general public? Are they thinking this is how all Bengali Muslim families treat their mothers? Several times as I read Utol Hawa, I recalled with affectionate nostalgia what a friend from Dhaka used to tell me about his relationship to his mother. ‘Amma’s slightest wish is a commandment for me,’ he used to say with complete conviction and enormous pride. I never doubted for a minute that this was the general pattern of behaviour in families in the subcontinent, no matter whether they were Hindu or Muslim, Jain or Christian, Sikh or Parsi. The burdensome legacy of her past that Taslima has inherited, the past that has shaped her – can it be a secure foundation for an enlightened feminist philosophy in her maturity? She must unlearn so many lessons! How to be kind to others, how to empathize with others, how to focus on others rather than on oneself all the time: these are not lessons one learns easily within the framework of a damaging, dysfunctional family.

It seems to me that something like a post-traumatic stress syndrome runs throughout Taslima’s literary output. She could have definitely done with expert psychological counselling, and maybe writing these books is helping her to get the poison out of her system. But Taslima’s obsessive dwelling on the dirty details of life makes me wonder whether all her shit-and-vomit details represent working through the unfinished businesses of her life – and we all have some of those – or are they a streetwise kid’s strategies to maximize her readership and sales? Was it really necessary for her readers to know how one of her elder brothers used to scratch his balls, how he farted, how he rolled the dirt of his skin up into little balls and sniffed them? It’s all there in Utol Hawa. Is this some form of sibling revenge? Such details show her deep hatred of this brother as well as the crudity of her own literary judgment. When detailing the infection she says she got from Rudra Muhammad Shahidullah, she spares us none of the gory details. Rudra’s friends will not find his portrait in Utol Hawa particularly flattering. And the bloke is dead and cannot come back and defend himself against any unfair charges. There is no way we, the vast majority of readers, can check the facts. Yes, I have read the interview she gave to Saptahik 2000, but no detail in that article is as disturbing as the information Taslima herself retails about her own life in Utol Hawa. It does not matter to me whether she chain-smokes or what kind of company she keeps: those facts belong to her personal life, and I would respect her privacy. But it is she herself who asks us to be immersed in the seething pot of her private life, with all the messy juices swirling in it, because in the end it is that pot, and not any feminist analysis, that is her real literary capital, what she lives off.

It is not surprising that Taslima’s novels are deeply problematic. I have read a few, and they all repeat the same theme: how bad men are. She manipulates her characters to bring this message home again and again. In the beginning, when she was writing columns only, I myself had defended her against the charge of being a man-hater. But those of her novels that I have read are pathologically man-hating. In Lajja, she makes her Hindu hero rape a Muslim prostitute in revenge for the killings of Hindus in Bangladesh: an extremely manipulated fictional conclusion. In another of her novels, a man suspects his newly married wife to be carrying someone else’s child and forces her to have an abortion; she then ‘takes revenge’ by getting herself impregnated by a neighbour and presents this child to her husband as his own. Sweet revenge is one of Taslima’s favourite fictional themes. She laces this theme of revenge against men with the spice of sex, and the formula sells: it has the seduction of a horror movie. Men seem to like the lurid concoction.

I would have said that Taslima was trapped and imprisoned in her rage, but what is interesting is that she has found a way of marketing it. Apart from comments and paragraphs en passant, I did not write at length about her for a long time. Until, that is, I encountered Phorasi Premik, her latest novel, which was published in both Dhaka and Calcutta for a change. That is to say, it was not banned in Bangladesh, because there is nothing against Islam in it. This book, however, is her magnum opus in man-hatred.

I have written a long review-article in a Toronto print magazine discussing the poetry and fiction of eight diasporic Bengali writers, four men and four women. The roots of seven out of the eight authors are in Bangladesh. In that essay I have included a long critique of Phorasi Premik. I would urge all interested readers to take a look at that essay. The details are as follows: Bangla Journal, edited by Iqbal Karim Hasnu, April-August 2002, Vol. 4, Nos. 1-2. The editor can be reached by e-mail at . Taslima has read this review and admits that it contains fair criticism. Curious readers may also find some food for thought in an article of mine on Salman Rushdie which was published in a previous issue of the same magazine (August 2001, Vol. 3, No. 2).

In Phorasi Premik Taslima tried to do what was extremely difficult for her to do: she portrayed her heroine as a Hindu girl from contemporary Calcutta, and gave her wild sexual adventures in Paris. She superimposed a lot of details from her own Mymensingh background, her own father and mother for instance, on this fictitious heroine. Unfortunately the strategy doesn’t work. It generates inauthenticity. A middle class professional Bengali Hindu family, a doctor’s family in Calcutta, does not operate like the family portrayed in Amar Meyebela. As a result, the characters, barring the character of the French lover himself, are cardboard cut-outs, and all characters are manipulated by the author to prove how bad men are everywhere from Calcutta to Paris. As a novel, it has elements of what in Britain would be called a bonkbuster. I took each prominent social and cultural inauthenticity and showed why it was inauthentic, why it didn’t work. I kind of deconstructed the book and showed why and how and where it was going wrong. In particular, I tried to compare it with Washington-based Dilara Hashem’s Hamela, published in the same year as Phorasi Premik. In my opinion Hamela is far superior as a work of fiction. Dilara is a superb storyteller, and can make her characters come really alive. She can draw both male and female characters with wit and compassion, with ease and elegance. There is no lack of feminist awareness in her writings, but it is not confrontational. She is able to see life as a whole, and to show us, with great psychological astuteness, the minds of the characters she creates, so that we can identify with them without effort. She is one of the foremost Bengali women novelists of our times, the author of classic novels such as Ghar, Mon, Janala; Kaktaliyo; Amlokir Mow; Ekoda Ebong Ananto; Stobdhotar Kane Kane; Mural; Shankhokorat; Sadar-Andar; Hamela; Setu; Chandragrahan; and many other titles; and she writes poetry and short stories, and playscripts which have been televised; but she does not get half the attention that Taslima gets! It is truly amazing that when discussing Taslima, critics do not bother to compare her with this distinguished woman novelist of the Bangladeshi diaspora! Dilara Hashem’s is a humane and humanistic art, enriched by lively settings, vivid characterization, and a great capacity for vicarious experience, all tremendous assets for a writer of fiction. A novelist must be able to identify with others so that she or he can create characters with whom we can identify as readers. Dilara does this with astonishing felicity and stylistic fluency. It is high time that critics began to discuss Taslima in a proper literary context, alongside other Bengali writers of our times, men and women, instead of pretending that she is a unique event and does not need any such comparative assessment!

Feminism itself was a well-established trend in Bengali writing by the time Taslima appeared in the scene. I should know, because after all I am also a Bengali writer and deeply involved in my times! Let me pause and pose a rhetorical question. In 1992, why was I asked to review Nirbachito Column in the first place, and why did the editors of Taslima Nasriner Pokkhe Bipokkhe decide to begin their anthology with my article? Because I was regarded as a feminist writer and critic myself. Apart from my many essays on women’s issues and women writers, my books such as Nari, Nogori, Noton Noton Pairaguli, and Rabindranath o Victoria Ocampor Sandhane deal with the lives of women from diverse cultural backgrounds, viewed from a contemporary woman’s perspective. Nari, Nogori was first published serially way back in 1965. Noton Noton Pairaguli was written at the end of the seventies and serialized in 1981-82. It is possible that the word pitritantro to mean patriarchy was first used in this book. In this novel there are streams of first-person testimonies given by women, and there is a portrait, among others, of a Muslim woman from Algeria, whose father was forty years older than her mother. Rabindranath o Victoria Ocampor Sandhane, written over 1981-82, is embedded in a kind of deconstructive feminist discourse which I pioneered, and I suffered at the hands of some critics for my audacity in mixing the story of Gurudev and his Vijaya with a modern love story. My first play, Raater Rode, written in 1990 (though published later), is actually being taught in English translation as a ‘postcolonial feminist text’ at a British university. I am mentioning these facts not out of any egomania (far from it!), but for the simple reason that many readers in this forum may not have much information about me. As these facts pertain to me, I can vouch for their accuracy, and by mentioning them I am hoping to gently remind readers of this forum that Taslima Nasrin has not sprung out of a cultural vacuum: there is indeed a history of contemporary Bengali feminist writing. By her date of birth Taslima could be my daughter, and I very genuinely admire her talents and abilities, but she is not the first Bengali feminist writer of our times! Since Taslima has decided that she is not going to be an activist and wishes to be considered as a ‘mere writer’, from now on she should really be set and seen in the correct literary context. Many able women are now writing in both the Bengals: poets, novelists, writers of short stories, feminist critics. Few of us can retail memories as colourful as Taslima: we may not have been sexually molested by our male relatives in childhood, or been given venereal disease by our partners, but that does not necessarily make us inferior artists! Each of us can only create from the context of our lives and personalities. Critics should stop treating Taslima as a unique phenomenon unrelated to a peer group. She should be assessed not by her smoking habits, or how much alcohol she consumes, or the company she keeps, or the clothes she wears, or her hairstyle, but by the quality of the texts she generates. What are her special skills, what are the areas where she excels, and what are the problematic areas/pitfalls for her? How does she fit in with the other writers of our times, say, alongside other Bengali women writers from Bangladesh and West Bengal, and all those in the Bengali diaspora: personalities as various as Dilara Hashem, Selina Hosain, Nasrin Jahan, Vijaya Mukhopadhyay, Gita Chattopadhyay, Navaneeta Deb Sen, Bani Basu, Kona Basu Mishra, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Joya Mitra, Anita Agnihotri, Krishna Basu, Mallika Sengupta, Chaitali Chattopadhyay, Mandakranta Sen, not excluding my humble self, to pick just a few names at random from a rich scene! There are many others! I happen to be more familiar with the names from West Bengal, but I am sure there is a stream of interesting women writers in Bangladesh too. And how does Taslima’s autobiographical writing compare with similar texts by women (and men!) from other countries? There must be many memorable texts out there! The first example that springs spontaneously to my mind is the 6-volume autobiography of that great Argentine woman, Victoria Ocampo, which I had to plough through in the original Spanish for the sake of my research work!

Somebody could do a research project looking at Dilara’s Kaktaliyo, an autobiographical novel, comparing and contrasting it with Taslima’s techniques in fiction and autobiography. Another project could compare Dilara’s Stobdhotar Kane Kane written long before Taslima’s Lajja, but touching similar communal issues on the other side of the border, dealing with a Muslim family’s decision on whether or not they should leave West Bengal after communal troubles (they don’t!). Where are all the researchers on Bengali women’s writing? There is much interesting work to be done, but it is not getting done! Nothing is more exasperating than to see the cult following of this or that writer to the complete neglect of equally talented artists in the same field! I do not hold a chair at any university, or else I would have set a few projects in motion by now!

I must confess I am bemused to see Taslima, the iconoclastic freethinker and redoubtable champion of women’s liberation, thriving on a manipulation of the book market by the publishing empires of modern capitalism. I think there is profound irony in this. English translations of other Bengali classic writers of the 20th century, Tagore himself, and all the stalwarts of the post-Tagore period, could never expect to get a posh launch in New York! I hasten to add that the English Meyebela has not been released or reviewed in the UK. The two countries may have been allies in the war against Iraq, but at the moment do not seem to share a passion for stories of growing up female in a Muslim world. British publishers probably gathered enough relevant experience when they dealt with Salman Rushdie, and it is likely that they do not want to hold in their bare hands another literary hot potato who is a critic of Islam!

Once again the crackle of cities on fire
rocking life to death
on planks of shaky horizons
must we burn through. - 

How the hot winds sing in our ears!
How they whip and sear
our vulnerable skin!
How they singe and scrape
our delicate frayed eye-lashes! 

Ringed in
by surging clouds of smoke,
we huddle together
as the cull draws to a close.
We must not cough! 

Our flesh is unwilling,
our spirit totters on the brink.
We are smoked to the bone
like herrings.

Still
we must not flinch! 

Blinded by orange dust,
choking, inflamed with passion,
on this arena stage
men slaughter one another:
the slayer and the slain
enveloped in the same saffron haze -
a dispersed stain. 

They call it the best part of valour.
Discretion's no part of this show, it seems. -
It's all action!
And a thoroughly open season,
those called friends and
those called foes alike
being fair game! 

Draped in black cloaks
that give them visual nobility,
their grim brows
clouded, belittled, bound,
women wail,
thirsting for cool springs,
rooting in the rubble
for buried afterbirths.
They must be the Chorus! 

I'm wondering
when they last washed their tresses,
those black rivers that surely cascade -
hidden from our eyes - over their
hunched backs. 

That dark energy
locked up in flowing hair
is kept leashed
for the duration of the show.
It would be unseemly -
and wasteful -
to uproot fistfuls
in the gaze of the promiscuous public.
Such lethal energy must not be released. -
No, not even for our sport! 

They rise,
speaking to us in fingers,
inscribing cobwebs in the air,
inducting us into the show. 

Quietly beads of sweat
trickle down their itchy scalps,
their straining necks;
blood dribbles down their legs;
but as skilled Thespians
they must not be seen to scratch
their frazzled selves. -
They must stay unfazed! 

Concealed within their cloaks,
their still-growing breasts
divide and multiply
like rich clusters of grapes,
like the breasts of the goddess
Artemis of Ephesus. 

From the hollow of my heart
a fleshy tube arises,
protruding into the
desiccating air:
carrying
drop by drop
the juices of my despair
upward
to the invisible sun's glare. 

It forms a loop, a knot,
then straightens out.
It balloons into a great bud.
It bursts into giant
scarlet flowers of sadness. 

Petals of dried blood
darken, flake off, crumble,
mingling their smell with sausages,
as neighbours, watching the same show,
give a cautious welcome
to the year's first barbecue. 

We have mysteries within mysteries:
near, nearer, nearest,
and far, farther, farthest -
the co-creative synergy
of the viewed and the viewer -
included, for our pleasure,
in the same season ticket. 

Sweet spring degenerates
into bird-call, wasp-buzz,
the flapping of drying sheets,
the cat's silence,
the return of last year's mildew
to the honeysuckle's leaves - 

as March resiliently advances. 

Did Tagore, in signing the 1936 memorandum to the British Government along with other leading Hindu Bengalis, which asked for changes in the notorious Communal Award, tarnish his own humanist beliefs? In my opinion, no! To see it that way would be to take the act out of its context and to misinterpret it. It would be a one-dimensional judgement. Mr Ismail asks: ‘Have our warm and fuzzy feelings towards the great man clouded our judgment or is there something I’m missing?’ What is missing is the entire ‘chaalchitra’ of Rabindranath Tagore’s thinking and art. We do not judge a man by one signature, especially when he has left an ocean of words which amply convey how he thought, how he felt. Does my use of the word ‘chaalchitra’ mark me as a Hindutva activist? It doesn’t. Similarly, the signing of that political petition does not indicate that Tagore had abandoned his humanist beliefs.

The language of the petition in question may sometimes verge on the ‘politically incorrect’, but it was not Tagore who had drafted it, and he really cannot be held responsible for its inelegances or excesses. And he must have had pressure put on him to sign up, as his signature would have lent the petition weight. But anyway, it was of no avail, because it was not heeded.

The politics of the Communal Award was tortuous. The Hindu elite were definitely feeling insecure, frustrated, and vulnerable, with their backs to the wall. Far from indicating a slippage from his humanistic stand, Tagore’s own opposition to the Communal Award was determined precisely by his fervent humanism. He was painfully aware that the Award was driving a wedge between the communities. He knew that it was going to be a death-blow to the unity of the Bengali people. How far-sighted he was!

Tagore was not a politician, but a creative artist and a deep thinker. His involvement in politics was never from the standpoint of realpolitik. It was based on morals and ideals, on an overflowing love of humanity. He developed his ideas throughout his long life and was a persistent self-modernizer through reading, travelling, and interaction with other great minds. He was against divisions, and against narrow nationalism; he was a true and committed internationalist. Read his voluminous works, and you will understand! There is no other short cut.

There cannot be a shadow of doubt that the author of a story like ‘Durasha’ or a poem like ‘Rongrejini’ thought of Muslims as fellow humans, nothing more, nothing less, and as an integral part of Indian society. He cared deeply for the welfare of his tenants, so many of whom belonged to the Muslim peasantry of East Bengal. He initiated projects for community development at Shilaidaha and Potisar, the headquarters of the family estates. At Potisar he started an agricultural bank, in which he later invested the money from his Nobel prize, so that his school could have an annual income, while the peasants could have loans at low rates of interest. For his mature social thinking please go to the essays of Kalantar. He does touch on the Hindu-Muslim question. He is aware of the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the rulers, but he does not let his countrymen off the hook because of that. Certain divisions were there already; it was because they were there that the manipulations of the rulers could prove to be so effective, so deadly. As far as the Communal Award is concerned, the speech Tagore himself wrote and delivered in a mass meeting in Calcutta Town Hall on 15 July 1936 will surely be a better indicator of his personal position and language-use than the memorandum he signed with others.

On the whole, I agree with Ms Antara Sen’s assessment of Tagore; I only found myself wincing when, speaking of the decay of values in modern times, she used the first person plural – ‘We reject Tagore’s beliefs, spurn his ideas, dash his hopes, ignore his prayers....’ etc. I winced, because I did not see myself in that category ‘we’. I have spent many years studying his texts and doing research on him, and cherish everything I have learnt from him. That is why to me the thefts from the Santiniketan museum were very depressing and hurtful. I had spent so many months of my life working happily in that very building from the back of which the things were stolen! That building houses Tagore’s archives and is the very epicentre of Tagore research. To me it was a ‘secular sacred’ place, so the burglary appeared like an act of desecration.

Sure, the medallion itself is a symbolic thing, no more, yet it wasn’t just a ‘trinket’, as Mr Ismail puts it. It wasn’t any old trinket, like my aunt’s bracelet or your grandmother’s necklace. It was a memento of an important cultural event. And many other items were stolen too – belonging to Tagore himself, to his wife Mrinalini Devi, to his father Debendranath. All these things were part of the memorabilia of the life of a great man and a great artist, articles which ‘we’ (to use Ms Sen’s collective plural) would have treasured and guarded, if ‘we’ had had any feeling for our own history. I have travelled a bit in Britain and Continental Europe, and seen with my own eyes the loving care with which Europeans guard such souvenirs in their memorial museums. But ‘we’ do not share that sentiment, and here, ironically, Hindus and Muslims seem to unite, the former with their view of samsara as maya, their scorn of ‘taijaspatra’, mere material objects, and the latter with their iconoclasm, their suspicion of images and icons. Either way, it boils down to a lack of respect for cultural artefacts. This attitude, combined with a careless attitude to safety in most spheres of life, has resulted in this loss. The hypothesis of ‘insider involvement’ seems superfluous to me, as the items were removed from display cabinets, not from storage units. The museum was open to visitors and anybody could have come and done their private research on what was worthy of stealing. I was not comfortable when this museum was set up at the back of the archives in the recent past. The stream of visitors made the building and grounds far too noisy and altogether too vulnerable. The display of items with minimal security must have been too tempting for those to whom the historical value of the objects was nil and the monetary value was everything. Otherwise, they would not have wrenched off the ornamental gold top of a walking-stick and left the actual stick behind, as they did. I gather that the real Nobel Prize medal went on display only a few years back; until then it was a replica that used to be displayed. But then somebody in authority decided that it was wrong to ‘deceive’ the masses with a replica. Why didn’t they just declare that the item was a replica and leave it at that, thus combining security with political correctness?

The loss of these Tagore memorabilia from the very heart of Visvabharati may not be a national catastrophe, but it is surely a national disgrace.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson
April 16, 2004

Information on the Selected Poems of Buddhadeva Bose

SELECTED POEMS OF BUDDHADEVA BOSE, translated and introduced by Ketaki Kushari Dyson, Oxford University Press India, 2003, 292 pp, hardback, ISBN 0-19-566335-7.

(The Statesman)

The poetry of Buddhadeva Bose (1908-74) is the heritage of all Bengalis everywhere. He was born in Comilla and raised in Noakhali and Dhaka before going to live in Calcutta. He was a distinguished graduate of Dhaka University. He founded and edited KAVITA, which became the most important Bengali poetry journal of its time and a pioneer of the modernist movement in Bengali poetry. He was the first academic to introduce the discipline of Comparative Literature to the subcontinent, and founded and headed the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University. He taught in various American campuses too, and so America is there in some of his poems, and his links with various American campuses are explored in the Introduction. Buddhadeva Bose was an ardent believer in the value of the mother tongue as a medium of education and of creative literature. He fought for the status of the mother tongue all his life. He was himself a major poetry translator and introduced some of the modernist poets of Europe to Bengalis.

The help of Uttorshuri members in giving this volume the publicity it deserves will be deeply appreciated. Please encourage your libraries to purchase copies and introduce it to your English-speaking friends. This poet deserves to be known more widely as one of the major poets of 20th century South Asia.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson
December 12, 2003

Unicode and Bengali software

This is in response to Lal Chakraborty, who has been expressing anxieties about Unicode and Bengali software. I think he is being gloomy for the wrong reasons. Unicode will not mean the end of conjuncts and the extinction of Bengali. I have been in touch with a member of the Unicode Indic e-mail group about this and will copy the two messages I received from him. (I am a member of the e-mail group myself, but most of the time do not understand the techno-talk.) But first I wish to share some of my own experiences with members of this group, in the hope that they might be of some use to others.

All scripts of the Nagari family require conjuncts. So there's no chance of conjuncts disappearing. Conjuncts will be formed and will appear on the screen. What worries me is something different. With centralization and standardization, we are moving towards a mindset which ignores the specific requirements of the different Indic scripts and views them through the lens of Roman phonetic analysis rather than in the actual calligraphic context of those scripts. I have been typing in Bengali since the late seventies of the last century, first on a manual typewriter, then from1992 onwards on a computer. For some time now I have been preparing the final camera-ready copies of all my Bengali books, covering prose, poetry, and drama. The entire 800-page camera-ready copy of the massive book Ronger Rabindranath was prepared by me at home, as was the novel that was published the other day. By now, my publishers in Calcutta have realized that a camera-ready copy prepared by me is more error-free than anything prepared by 'professional' printers.

From my long experience this is what I have to say. To achieve excellence and speed, to generate sustained flows of error-free literary texts, typing in Bengali needs to be related to the way we actually write in Bengali by hand. It needs to be linked to the neuro-muscular brain-hand coordination we have acquired since childhood, to follow the sequence of cursive Bengali handwriting. We need a keyboard layout in which the vowels and consonants are not simplistically aligned to the Qwerty keyboard, where the Bengali signs are placed in optimum positions from the point of view of actual frequency of use in Bengali, and where all the vowel-signs are displayed on the keyboard as separate entities from the actual vowels and as unshifted keys. When in the early eighties Linotype of Cheltenham pioneered the computerization of Bengali printing for the Anandabazar group of papers, they did research into these optimum positions linked to the frequency of use, and in this respect I find their keyboard (which I use) on the whole quite good, barring the position of one letter which is frequently used in Bengali but is in a shifted position. There is scope for improvement, but it was a good beginning.

On this keyboard I type in the same linear sequence as I would write by hand. Thus, to write my own name, I hit the 'e-kar' first, then the 'ka'. To write 'didi', I type 'hrasva i-kar', then 'da', and the same again. But in future, within a standardized Indic system, this option will not be available. People will be compelled to 'think Roman' and write in the Roman sequence, always the consonant first, the vowel afterwards, and the vowel-sign as an independent entity will disappear from the keyboard display. Thus in future, to write my name in the standardized system, people will have to hit the 'ka' first, then the vowel 'e' (not the e-kar, the actual vowel) - as one would when typing in English - and the machine itself will work behind the scene (as it does when forming a conjunct) and deliver the correct formation for viewing on the screen and for printing. So the end result will be the same, but the process will be different. Both 'hrasva' and 'deergha' i-kar will have to be keyed AFTER the consonant, as will e-kar, o-kar, and ou-kar, violating our long-established neuro-muscular coordination acquired since childhood.

In my opinion, if the aim is to deliver excellence, then the process does matter. When I write in Bengali, I do not think in terms of the Roman script at all. When I type in Bengali, I banish the Roman script and its habits from my mind and think only in terms of the Bengali script. My present keyboard is bilingually marked, with the Roman in black and Bengali in red. When I type in Bengali, I think in Bengali, and the Qwerty markings totally fade from my consciousness and visual field. I think this is as it needs to be for the rapid generation of correct text, especially for writers who are not just copy-typing mechanically but are actually thinking and word-processing, i.e., composing their texts at the computer. When one is actually creating Bengali text on the machine, a writer's visual imagination is vividly connected to the graphics of the Bengali script and not to Roman phonetic analysis.

It is true that by sheer habit one can train oneself to type in any method, however irrational. This is especially true in 'developing countries' where men must do whatever they can to earn a living. When I was in Calcutta in 2001-02, I found that the small printing houses were running on plagiarized software and the labour of a caste of workers called 'DTP workers', who can process Bengali text mechanically from the writer's MS even on Qwerty keyboards completely innocent of any Bengali markings. They have memorized the positions thoroughly, like robots. When I saw this, I was so upset that in an interview I gave to The Statesman shortly afterwards I commented that Bengali technologists should go to Dharmatala and hang themselves in shame.

What is it that we want? Just a caste of DTP workers who excel as robots? Or do we want to disseminate the fruits of modern technology more widely through the community? Do we want to see more Bengalis doing their own Bengali word-processing at home? Are we thinking of a time when all Bengali writers in Bangladesh and West Bengal will have their own computers? Do we want to encourage our children to type in Bengali? In such a scenario a method that remains linked to the actual graphics of our script will yield more consistently high-quality results. There is no doubt that many of the errors we currently notice in computer-printed Bengali are due to a misalignment between the process and the end-result. The more the process approximates to the sequence of handwriting, the better.

Even apart from the question of delivering accuracy, there is the question of what is commensurate with the dignity of a language. I think it is perfectly OK for overseas Bengalis to write software which juggles the Qwerty keyboard to deliver Bengali for the purpose of running magazines or producing leaflets/booklets. But for writing books, a sturdier linking of the process to the product is called for. Also, if children are going to learn Bengali typing, should they have to approach it via 'Roman analysis'? This may not be a big deal for the children of overseas Bengalis, who are surrounded by English, but learning to type in Bengali 'via English' cannot be the right model for Bengali children in their home territory.

I would have liked Bengali technologists to have fought harder for the dignity of our script, which is by widespread agreement one of the most handsome scripts in the whole world. Technology should be there to serve us, not to enslave us. We need in-depth solutions rather than quick fixes. The benefits of centralization should not block choice, research, experiment. There is scope for refining the optimum positions of the markings and for a cottage industry service that marks up standard keyboards for individual customers.

After 11 years of sterling service, the Apple Mac on which I have been writing in Bengali is in a frail condition and I have to change my machine. The software, Design Studio, must also be changed, because there is no support for it, and in fact it has not been supported for several years. When I first acquired my system at considerable expense, Linotype had already been taken over by a German Company and was operating as Linotype-Hell. Shortly thereafter the Company ceased to exist, due to the lack of a profitable market for them. Lamentably, some of the finer details of how the software worked have been lost for ever. They are now irretrievable. This is a great pity, because Design Studio's method for keying double and triple conjuncts was far more elegant than what is now available.

I am in the process of acquiring a new software for writing Bengali called Executive Bengali Pro from a small London Company called Gate Seven. This Word-based software will support the original Linotype layout with one modification at my specific request. I prefer this layout to others I have seen, including the Bijoy from Bangladesh. The secrets of the original Design Studio method for forming conjuncts being lost, I must learn to adapt to a less elegant keying method for conjuncts. This is a great pity, because it will slow my speed. But I will be able to carry on typing in the right linear sequence as regards the vowel-signs, maintaining my neuro-muscular coordination, and to continue to have the Linotype font. The 'Linotype Bengali' library of fonts remains the most elegant archive of the computer fonts and has been widely plagiarized in both India and Bangladesh. However, getting a new keyboard properly marked with Bengali remains an intractable problem. In the entire continent of Europe there is probably only one person who can customize keyboard marking at a price affordable to an individual, and of course this person is not a Bengali. I repeat, there is scope for a cottage industry which can mark up keyboards with Bengali signs for individual customers. Or at least for a service to supply suitable fine Permanent Marker pens for individual customers, pens which will produce marks which will not get smudged by perspiring fingers!

Let me now copy the two messages I mentioned at the beginning of my letter. They are from Mike Meir of Gate Seven, from whom I am getting my new software, Executive Bengali Professional. These messages too should help people to sort things out in their minds.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson
August 28, 2003

Dear Ketaki Unicode is a standard for text storage. It does not have anything to say about how text should look, nor about the means by which the text should be entered, nor is it profit-making.

It is based on a philosophy for the storage of Indic text (ISCII) which was developed by the Indian government, and which insists that text be broken down to its most basic elements prior to storage. This consequently avoids problems with deciding which complex elements of text such as conjunct consonants should be included or excluded from the standard. The standard is fixed in one sense: that existing elements are not altered, even if they are wrong, but it does get extended if, as in the case of Bengali, there are issues which cannot be resolved within the standard as it stands.

The process for adding additional elements or scripts is well documented, and it is open to anyone to make submissions regarding changes or extensions, and to have input into any proposals which are made.

It is open to anyone to develop their own system to enable the entry of text as Unicode, and/or then to manage its rendering for display and printing. It is open to such developers to release their work under the profit-motive, or freely.

The chief advantage of Unicode is that it supplies a standard way to represent text, allowing text stored as Unicode to be subjected to all the other activities such as sorting and cutting and pasting between documents which users have come to expect. It also allows text in, for example, Bengali script to be clearly identified as such.

In the case of the software you mention, you will note that they support a wide range of encodings, etc. What this actually means is that they are encouraging people to steal typefaces from those who develop them and then release them as a way of making a living, in the expectation that people will pay for them. Mostly these are not huge corporations, they are small organisations such as ourselves.

The result of this general attitude is that typeface development in Bangladesh in particular seems to have halted completely. What little is being produced is mainly poor quality copies of the Linotype designs. The same is true of Ethiopia, and other parts of the third world.

This is in contrast to the situation which existed in the days when typefaces existed as physical objects which wore out quickly and had to be purchased over and over again. While this for-profit activity was going on there was a lively, creative and often high quality typographic development process indigenous to South Asia.

Best wishes

Mike

Dear Ketaki

As I have probably said before, Unicode is a text storage system. It represents discrete letters as (normally) 16-bit numbers for storage by computers. The system which was chosen for representing all the Indic scripts was based on ISCII, and breaks down the text to its simplest form. Thus a conjunct is represented by its component parts, as a sequence of [consonant] hasanta [consonant] ....

However, there is no intention that Unicode text should be displayed to the user in this way. Display of Unicode text is taken care of by text shaping software, which may form part of an operating system such as Windows, or may be independent. This software forms an interface between the simplified Unicode text representation which is found on the computer's storage system, and the display of complex text which is designed to be read by users. The complex text may contain as many or as few conjuncts and other typographical features as the typeface designers and engineeers care to include.

The system which Windows uses to display complex scripts is called Uniscribe. The font technology is called open type. Both are documented on the Microsoft typography website, the Bengali secion at:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/bengalot/default.htm

The Bengali shaping engine is as yet incomplete, and is being worked on actively right now. However, the current shaping engine, to be found in Internet Explorer 6 works to a large extent, though with some acknowledged problems.

One advantage of Unicode as a storage medium is in fact that it has nothing to say about how the text should look.

It does specify particular text as being definitely Bengali, which is not the case with the 8-bit fonts the writer is referring to. In this way, text which contains a mixture of scripts always remains comprehensible. It is also possible for the same text to be made to appear in a number of different forms, depending on the font designer, or on particular standards such as the Bangladeshi Textbook board standard. The appearance of the text will change, but the underlying Unicode text remains the same, so if users do not like the relatively simplified forms which the Textbook standard, for example, calls for, they can change it to a more traditional appearance just by changing the font.

Additionally, because the underlying code is a defined standard, users can search and sort it reliably.

Hope this clarifies things

Best Wishes

Mike

Seeking literary advice

Thank you, Lopa, for mentioning my work in this context, and thank you too, Indira, for your kind comments, which are really appreciated because as a diasporic writer, I do not get enough reader-feedback and any I get is always welcome.

Hello Shiralee, it is a pleasure to meet you in this forum. It is obvious that you are still clarifying your own thinking and shifting your perspective from one angle to another. You have already received a lot of advice by now! My thoughts, for what they are worth, are below.

Was Selina Hosain's name mentioned? If not, you should add her name to the list.

Let me mention two interesting anthologies which might be useful to you as general source-books or reference-books, from which you might take off in other directions:

1) Zenana Mehfil: Bangali Musalman Lekhikader Nirbachita Rachana 1904-1938, ed. by Shaheen Akhtar and Moushumi Bhowmik, published by Stree, Calcutta, 1998, ISBN 81-85604-19-3. (A good introduction to the history of Bengali Muslim women's writing in the pre-partition period.)

2) The Stream Within, Short Stories by Contemporary Bengali Women, Translated and Edited by Swati Ganguly and Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, Foreword by Malini Bhattacharya. Also published by Stree, Calcutta, 1999. ISBN 81-85604-42-8. (Although this is a translated volume, it will be useful because it will lead you to the original works of several female authors from both sides of Bengal.)

If you are simply looking for generic pictures of family life in the cities of Bangladesh (and don't forget the very-important small towns) in 1950-2000, in novels and short stories, irrespective of the author's gender, I am sure there are plenty of documents. Alam Khorshed and others can help you sort out many books. However, if you are interested in looking closely at the portrayal of women and family relationships, it will be necessary for you to compare the perspectives of male and female authors carefully, as there will be significant differences.

If you are only interested in the social content, then the genre makes no difference, and you will find portrayals of family life in autobiographies and memoirs as well as in fictional stories and thinly veiled fictionalized autobiographies. Thus Taslima Nasrin's two volumes of autobiography, Amar Meyebela and Utol Hawa, document growing up in Mymensingh, but whether her story is typical or atypical, whether it could be called 'mundane and commonplace for a family living through the second half of the 20th century' (to quote you) or whether she documents the life of a more dysfunctional family, is a matter that can be debated. From a purely literary point of view, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an atypical story. The problem arises when an atypical narrative is marketed as the typical life-story of a particular community and is consumed as such. One has to be very careful in using literary material for the purpose of extracting social history from it.

Diasporic writing is yet another ball-game. Yes, Dilara Hashem is undoubtedly the most distinguished woman author of the Bangladeshi diaspora at the present time, and I have been saying so myself for some time! I have been trying, through various articles, to make people more aware of her work. It is high time she was better known. Anything she writes is in a competent social-realist vein and she is a compelling story-teller. I don't think she began writing about migrant life right away after her own migration to the West in the seventies. She was already a popular novelist with her Ghar Mon Janala (1965) and carried on for some time setting her stories in Bengal (undivided or divided). I believe Ghar Mon Janala was translated into Chinese and was also made into a film. Her Ekada Ebong Ananta (1975), Stabdhataar Kaane Kaane (1976), Amlokir Mow (1977) and semi-autobiographical novel Kaktaliya (1978) are classic stories of family life and growing up in her native context, with many strong female characters, and deserve close study. These novels would certainly give you the authentic pictures of family life that you are seeking. Gradually Dilara started to depict the life of migrants, and now she does that at full tilt. She has acquired the diasporic eye. Nowadays her stories can be located anywhere. Her settings can range from India's Aurangabad (see Mural, 1983) to Washington DC where she now lives (see Sadar-Andar, 1998). Her Setu (2000) is a very cosmopolitan novel in a canvas stretching from Washington DC to Lucknow and Colombo, with echoes of Kenya. Her brilliant novel Hamela (2001) moves between the USA and Bangladesh, while Chandragrahan (2002) is set entirely in Pakistan. It is astonishing that this versatile and prolific novelist has not received more attention from critics and professional academics. She makes interesting use of fragments of Urdu and English in her dialogues, and often displays a cinematic technique of narration. When she is in an urban mood, she has occasionally reminded me of Woody Allen. She needs to be translated for an international market, but whoever translates her must command a racy, idiomatic style.

Generally speaking, Bengali diasporic writing has been neglected by critics. Stay-at-home Bengali critics do not seem to be all that interested in exploring the differences that emerge in content and style when an author has settled abroad, far from his/her native place. In contrast, South Asian diasporic writing in English has received enormous attention, sometimes out of all proportion to its inherent literary merit. The hype surrounding the English-language fiction of South Asians (wherever they live) and the neglect of equally competent writers writing in the subcontinent's 'native languages' is a troublesome question, reflecting a continuing neo-colonialist attitude. Especially troublesome, as in literature the medium does to some extent shape or give a tilt to the message. Someone of South Asian origin writing a novel in English will project a different world-view from someone writing in Bengali or Hindi or Urdu simply because languages themselves are carriers of world-views.

Documentation of migrant life, as such, is different again from diasporic writing. Brick Lane (which you say you've read) is not really diasporic writing. It is British writing with a Bangladeshi flavour. The author is a young woman of ethnically mixed origin, brought up and educated in Britain, but also carrying a second-generation Bangladeshi affiliation. You may compare her work with the stories of Jhumpa Lahiri, who lives in the USA. Similarly, Sunil Gangopadhyay's portrayal of the life of expatriate Bengalis in America is not diasporic writing. He does travel a lot, but is not based abroad.

As for my humble self, I may truthfully claim to be one of the earliest women writers of the Bengali diaspora. This is because I have been functioning as an expatriate writer from a very young age, almost continuously from 1960. My metropolitan affiliation is to Calcutta, where I was born and educated to the age of 20, and where all my Bengali books are published, but my family roots are in pre-partition East Bengal. I first came to Britain as a student (1960-63), but settled here more permanently in 1964 after my marriage. One problem in contemporary critical discourse is the near-exclusive focus on fictional writing. Fiction is certainly an important genre of our times, but it is not the only literary genre! Fiction carries a larger dose of social content and story-telling, and hence is a handy source-material for inquiries tinged with social anthropology, -- and if that is your particular bias or angle, Shiralee, I do understand! -- but to understand the subtle dreams and aspirations, the emotional, spiritual, and imaginative life of a group of people it is also necessary to take into consideration the genre of poetry, which continues to be important in the Bengali tradition in an overall sense, especially through the heritage of poets and songwriters like Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam. Diaspora enters poetry in a slightly different way from the way it enters fiction. It is a different threshold of entry. I was a poet before I left India, and long before I became a writer of fiction or drama, and my poetry began to reflect my new environment right away - from the early sixties onwards. Even before one has penetrated the social realities of a new place, one tends to adjust to, and give representation to, the landscape and climate of a new habitat. Poets usually feel the need to respond to the new face of the earth even if they have not fully decoded the new society.

My new social environment was also reflected in an autobiographical book like Nari, Nogori, which was written and serialized in the sixties, and which contained the seeds of novelistic writing. Characters included a Yugoslav, Russians, Armenians, and one person of mixed Russian-Armenian origin. My first proper novel, Noton Noton Pairaguli, was written over 1978-80, serialized in 1981-82, and published as a book in 1983. It is one of the earliest examples of fiction-writing in Bengali in which a female author has located her story 'abroad' - in this case in Britain - and filled it with 'all kinds of characters'. The novel has characters drawn from diverse ethnicities (Bengali, English, Northern-Irish, Southern-Irish, Algerian, French-Canadian, Liverpool-Jewish, Greek, Greek-Armenian, migrant Chinese...all based on personal observation) and reflects a multicultural reality sifted through a diasporic Bengali eye. You mentioned that you had read Prem Nei, Shiralee. Gourkishore Ghosh's Prem Nei, I take it? I cannot resist the self-indulgence of mentioning that Gourkishore was a great admirer of this novel of mine (and of my other work)!! I am very proud of that.

You can find out more about me, Shiralee, if you are interested, from my website:

http://www.ketaki.dyson.dial.pipex.com

I have written three novels, three plays, lots of poetry, lots of essays, some research-based books, and I have also translated poetry. Everything I write is from a diasporic perspective (I am incapable of writing from any other perspective), and I do have a strong interest in the lives of women, and I depict strong female characters. I am also interested in formal experiments. My second novel combines fiction with genuine research and literary translation. My plays also have clear experimental features.

In my essays I have tried to draw critical attention to the existence of diasporic writing in Bengali. If you are interested, come back to me and I can give you references to some articles. One other work may be of some interest to you. This is my own translation (Night's Sunlight) of my first play (Raater Rode). The English version has a long Preface, called the Translator's Prologue, in which many relevant issues relating to diaspora and the comparative reception of South Asian literature in English and in translation are dealt with.

Well, that's a bumper crop of literary advice - some of which may not be directly relevant to your present line of thinking. But maybe it will help you to clarify your own thoughts further. Good luck with your foraging. If you have any other questions, do not hesitate to come back to me.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson
August 24, 2003

Last updated: November, 2004