CELEBRATION
AND MOURNING
Manikarnika Ghat at Varanasi is well-known for two
soul-stirring acts. At one of the ghat, Lord Shiva is venerated by the devout
and at the other end the dead are consigned to flames.
One pauses to wonder whether celebration and
mourning can occur simultaneously. Well, these two singular emotions
are nothing but a reflection of a sutra or knowledge point from the Art
of Living. Simply put, it means that opposite values are complementary.
During a course
a tutee was to ask Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as to how opposite values are
complementary rather than contradictory.
The spiritual Master replied in his enigmatic
manner which left everyone spellbound, “Do you
watch movies? Now suppose you talk to a director and tell the director, ‘Why do
you want a villain in your movie? Why you want all these thrills? You should
have just made everything very smooth.’ What would he say? A boy was there and
a girl was there, they met each other and they got married. They got children
and that’s it, movie ends. There is no thrill, the girl did not get lost or
there is no drama, no tears and no anger and none of those big issues. Will
anybody watch that movie? Even a love story will not be watched, isn’t it? So,
is your question answered? Opposite values are complementary.”
Human life and the history of nations are
replete with vicissitudes and synodic curves. There is no straight line in
life. It is a cyclical process where celebrations are more often than not accompanied
by bereavements and mourning. This perhaps maintains the balance in life and in
the universe.
On the night of 14th/15th August
1947, India overthrew the colonial yoke under the
pioneering leadership of the apostle of peace, Mahatma Gandhi who followed the
strategy of Satyagraha or civil disobedience and non-violence.
Gandhiji was a canny politician, who
realized that violence would only beget violence and the Indian arsenal was not
robust enough to take on the military might of the British.
On the 15th August, 1947 the Indian
tricolour was unfurled by the Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru from the
ramparts of Red Fort.
However, much against the wishes of the Mahatma, India
was partitioned into two countries; India and Pakistan. The country was
sandwiched in between West and East Pakistan.
Even as India was freed from
the foreign yoke there was a massive migration as millions of Muslims trekked
to West or East Pakistan. Similarly, millions of Hindus and Sikhs traversed in
the opposite direction to their new homeland.
In this humungous
movement of men and material, several thousand disappeared from the face of
planet earth and could never reach their appointed destination. Celebration
was accompanied by wailing and mourning as reckless religiosity and vengeance
subsumed the voice of sanity and reason.
Across the Indian
subcontinent, communities which for several years lived together attacked each
other in a brutal manner. Hindus and Sikhs were arrayed against Muslims in an
unprecedented genocide.
The carnage was intense,
with massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and savage sexual exploitation.
It is widely estimated by historians that around seventy-five thousand women
were raped, with several of them were disfigured or dismembered. Ironically
celebration was once again dovetailed with mourning.
India was partitioned
in 1947, and the province of East Bengal was rechristened as East Pakistan and was
separated from the other four provinces by 1,800 km of Indian territory. The
noted socialist Dr Ram Manohar Lohia termed this bifurcation a historical
monstrosity.
This division on
religious lines was planned and executed by the evil mind of the cartographer
Cyril Radcliffe who had never been to India, and without understanding the
composite culture of East and West Bengal.
It may be recalled
when nationalism had assumed magical proportions in Bengal, as part of the
stratagem to contain it, a devious ploy of divide et impera was
mischievously conceived by the British in the tumultuous year of 1905 by Lord
Curzon who reorganized Bengal into East and West Bengal on religious lines.
This which was to lay the ground for the rise of communalism in the hitherto
peaceful state of Bengal. From 1905 to 1947, the genesis for a series of anti-Hindu
communal riots had been laid in Bengal. Unfortunately, except for ‘The Great
Calcutta Killings’ of 1946, there is hardly any debate on the rioting and arson
in the state.
A closer scrutiny makes it evident that what
happened in Bengal in 1940s and especially during the tragic bifurcation had
the seeds sown way back by Machiavellian ideology of the British and Lord
Curzon and soon their celebration got converted into mourning of Indians
in general and Bengalis in particular.
Meanwhile down the line
in post-independence history there was palpable tension between the provinces
of East and West Pakistan. Much to their horror, the Pakistani generals
discovered that scissoring of a country and formation on the basis of religion
did not pay the required dividends as the entity lacked cultural homogeneity.
Mujibur Rahman, the
prominent Awami League leader had won the elections in the undivided Pakistan
with widespread support but the Punjabi Pakistani generals were reluctant to
part with power. Their celebration turned into a mourning as India helped to
raise and assisted the Mukti Vahini in East Pakistan which retaliated against
the abuse of power by the leaders of West Pakistan.
The
epochal day of 26 March 1971 is considered the official Independence Day
of Bangladesh. There was carousing in India and widespread celebration with the
dismemberment of Pakistan. One state
celebrated its Independence Day, while the other was plunged in mourning and
darkness.
Certainly,
fact is stranger than fiction.
On the 75th anniversary of our Independence, the country is
resonating with the slogan of Har Ghar Tiranga.
We have to ensure the
flag flutters with aplomb and guard against any complacency.
No comments:
Post a Comment