By Sunil Kumar
My review,
‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance...”- Jawaharlal Nehru.
Our first prime minister’s eloquent words resonated with me when reading this book. ‘Blood Island’ is a heart-wrenching read, detailing one of the many times when the modern Indian republic’s tryst with its destiny has failed completely, resulting in an orgy of violence and mayhem.
Undivided Bengal was a beacon for pre-independent India. Towering figures in literature, religion, science, politics blazed a path that was inspirational for much of the country. The genesis of partition that tore the country asunder and led to the largest forced migration in human history started in part due to the erstwhile Viceroy and the British government’s annoyance with the revolutionaries of Bengal.
The 1905 partition of the state, the formation of the Muslim League, Direct Action Day, Noakhali riots, large scale bloodletting altered the landscape/mindscape of the land permanently. This impacted the fate of the teeming millions of a country about to taste its ‘moth-eaten’ freedom soon altering destinies of billions yet to be born in the subcontinent.
Although this is a journalistic critique/expose detailing in part the horrific massacre of a population by the Jyoti Basu Communist government of West Bengal in 1979, it was merely a link in a long chain of events that has continued well into the 21st century. Battleground Bengal screams at us with headlines once more with the ongoing election and the 50th anniversary of the Bangladesh Liberation War.
The most revealing comments in my opinion come from the minister of Sunderbans Affairs, Kanti Ganguly in the latter half of this book. Like many apparatchiks of a smug government machinery, he reduces the casualties and suffering to a sanitized account that reduces figures of thousands to less than ten- a perfect Potemkin village.
Although in part the politician acknowledges the double-speak of the Communists in deceiving refugees, he manages to sugar-coat and distort the narrative like many people presently in power throughout this country and the world. Regional, parochial, party interests that have plagued/ continue to affect much of our polity.
Deep Halder also manages to explain what according to him are many facets of the Bengali milieu, the pretentious bhadralok who opine on everything under the sun but ignore their own backyard/ the chottolok, playing on linguistic pride, caste dynamics and the ingrained hypocrisy of an apparently castless/supposedly non communal Marxist government.
Accounts by the Marichjhapi survivors make one recoil in horror at the inhumane behaviour of an elected Left government that first gains power with the sympathy of the very people it then seeks to butcher. An account by Santosh Sarkar, one of the many survivors is quite revealing.
‘Sarkar was a Swami Vivekananda fanboy. He says the Swami’s spirit entered him when he addressed his fellowmen, ‘Brothers, this is no time to run and hide. Even if you hide, the police will open fire on you. They do not treat us refugees as humans. If they did, they would not have drowned our women. Ever since we, the Hindu refugees, have come to this country, the state has treated us like dogs. Whether in the refugee camps or outside, we have been shown no dignity.’
Sufficient to say that this long excerpt devolves into another painful massacre, burning, obliteration, rapes and other sordid accounts of government sanctioned violence against a hapless refugee population.
As a journalist, Halder tries his level best to be objective bringing about the caste dynamics and attempts to bring about perspectives from the other side i.e the government.
But, it is obvious that the antagonist in the tale is the Jyoti Basu government and his sympathies lie with the refugees and few activists/writers who tried to bring the whole event into the spotlight. In another illustration of the dictatorial rule of the former government, the author mentions an event that made headlines in 1990 when three female health officers were sexually assaulted in Gosaba.
A Unicef nurse, Anita Dewan was killed and assaulted violently apparently due to her attempt to expose the misappropriation of funds by the local bodies of the then CPI(M) government.
The book was a painful read after the sublime ‘Venkatesa Suprabhatam’, Amish’s take on Dharma et al. Dandakaranya in the Ramayana where many of the refugees were initially sent is also a cursed place according to the epic. Since most of this book is a dark twilight-zone account of things that happened in real life, it does manage to leave a bitter after taste. The dance of the macabre is constant, a tandav of death and destruction.
But, kudos to the writer for the courage to succinctly describe what would otherwise have been a forgotten after note in history. There are many accounts like this that have been erased by the sands of time.
To sum up, Amitava Kumar’s quote in the blurb says it best, ‘When the house of history is one fire, journalists are often the first responders, pulling victims away from the flames. Deep Halder is one of them’.
