Hamletology: Hatred against Bengalis--a common phenomenon...!!!...

Hamletology: Hatred against Bengalis--a common phenomenon...!!!...: "The TelegraphCalcutta, IndiaThursday, January 6, 2011 OUR CORRESPONDENT Santiniketan, J..."

Hamletology: An Open letter to all Nepalese demanding Gorkhalan...

Hamletology: An Open letter to all Nepalese demanding Gorkhalan...: "We are aghast after reading your statement in the newspapers. You may be surprised or may be under a ..."

An Open letter to all Nepalese demanding Gorkhaland:

We are aghast after reading your statement in the newspapers. You may be surprised or may be under a great misconception that whatever Resistance you are facing, they are basically North Bengal or Siliguri centred. Also you are under the impression that the rest of Bengal is sleeping or reeling under its own age old saga of violence and misery so much so that we don’t have the time to care a hang what peril you and your half witted mercenaries have broken loose upon us...!!!

You people are harbouring a great delusion...!!!

Your fight is not against the government of India, Morcha ,GNLF or whoever you are...or whatever you might say....Your fight is against the People of West Bengal because what you want is our land. If your motives are that toothless or innocuous and if you really insist that your fight is against the govt of India then let me give you a suggestion....Ask Govt Of India to relocate you and also to your people to be vocal for a place elsewhere and not West Bengal.

Perhaps we may even support you...But the fact that you want a homeland near to Nepal expose the darn lie you are uttering.

And How could you expect to ban the Bhasa committee? Are they terrorists... Are they prowling about with open kukris in their hands, burning effigies...? Running riot playing mayhem....?

On the contrary you should consider yourself fortunate that people of Bengal is still watching and watching...It is not that they are impotent. You should consider yourself fortunate all the more because still what you are confronting is democratic force in body and spirit.

It is our strength and not weakness. You all are foreigners and must go back to where you belong.

Bengalis are rising ...soon we will resolve our petty domestic issues which have made us an sitting duck to many prying eyes like you people...You think that Bengal is a dumping ground...Bengal is our Sacred Home, Made Sacred with the Blood of Great Martyrs.  It is our Paradise. We shall never concede its partition even to the extent of 1 /2 an inch.

Go back to your Land if you have the least of Self Respect to your History and  ill gotten Legend.

Joy Bongo Desh...!!!

Joy Matribhumi...!!!

Gorkhaland: Raising an Illegal Paramilliitary force in defiance of 140 of the IPC...!!!

Blatant defiance of the Law of land should be looked upon as another expression of self assertion, of Power and clout over people and against government in question. Aggressive elements must be dealt firmly with before any talk is arranged. We have to remember that such Pressure tactics and taking the majority Bengalis to ransom is to a certain extent portends a great threat to us, Bengalis and calls for serious introspection on the part of every Bengali both at personal and public level.
 The issue of Gorkhaland cannot be equated with the historical chronology of demands for Statehood in any parts of India. In every case the parties involved were essentially Indian by constitutional Standard and not refugees or treaty beneficiaries of Indian's neighbouring countries.
Demands for Gorkhaland or any institutional denomination to this effect should be thus deemed as territorial expansion of Nepal, in the hind side--expansion of China....!!!
India's  obsequious  foreign policy together with bad bargain and failure to claim what is rightfully agreed upon and holding on its own is the at the root of what is happening to it in the international arena.
Countries as trivial as Sri Lanka and Pakistan can hold it to ransom  and leave it jittery.

Hatred against Bengalis--a common phenomenon...!!! Another lesson for the sleeping Bengalis...!!!

The Telegraph Calcutta, India Thursday, January 6, 2011 OUR CORRESPONDENT

Santiniketan, Jan. 5: A group of Visva-Bharati students returning from a study trip to Nainital were allegedly beaten up and the girls in the team harassed on a train while it was passing through Bihar last night. The group, consisting 69 postgraduate students of ancient history, were returning from the week-long trip to the Uttarakhand hill station on the Bagh Express. They had taken the train from Kathgodam, near Nainital, on Monday afternoon. “When the train reached Bihar’s Barauni station at 10.30 last night, around 30 youths forcibly entered our reserved compartment and ordered us to make room for them,” said Saurav Mondal, a second-year MA student who was part of the Visva-Bharati team. “Some of the youths pushed us and sat on our seats. They also started teasing the girls in our group,” Mondal said. He said the youths refused to listen when they were told it was a reserved compartment. “When we tried to stop them from teasing the girls, the youths slapped and punched us,” Mondal added. He said another group of around 12 youths entered the compartment after the train reached the next station, Chouri Choura. “Some of them were armed with bhojalis. I suspect the first group of hooligans had called them up when we started protesting,” Mondal said. The student said the second group was “more aggressive” than the first. “They flung our luggage onto the platform,” Mondal said. “However, the youths got off after the train started pulling out of Chouri Choura station.” Some of the other students, who requested anonymity, alleged the ticket examiner and the railway protection force (RPF) jawan on the train refused to help. “Both the RPF jawan and the ticket examiner said they could do nothing. They even asked us to refrain from pulling the chain when the ruffians were throwing out our luggage,” a student said. The students got off at Burdwan around 9.50am and took another train to Bolpur. They submitted a written complaint to the station manager after the train reached Bolpur at 12.30pm. “We had contacted the Chhatra Parishad leaders of our varsity. They had told us to file a complaint once we reached Bolpur,” a student said. The complaint has been addressed to the divisional railway manager of Howrah. “I have forwarded the complaint to my seniors,” said Mihir Ranjan Sarkar, the Bolpur station manager. Ananda Sahur, one of the teachers who escorted the students on their trip, was not available for comment. Sahur is the head of Visva-Bharati’s ancient history department. The assaulted students, however, could not inform varsity authorities about the incident as Visva-Bharati remains closed on Wednesdays. Varsity spokesperson Amitabha Choudhury said: “I have come to know that something had happened to some of our students on a train. But no one has informed us officially yet.”

LOVELIEST OF TREES--by A. E. Housman.

                     A. E. Housman, 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.


                                           Textual Analysis

1. The theme of the poem.
   

Through the poem ‘Loveliest of Trees’, Houseman tried to underline the brevity of life against the vastness of earth and the limitless beauty that abounds in it. A time that is gone is gone forever and the time that is to come is a mere presumption. Thus, the poet wants to experience the beauty around in whatever form he happens to find. To him lifeless winter is as beautiful as lively spring.

2. ‘...wearing white...’ what does it suggest? Why is the tree wearing white according to the poet? What does the ‘white’ symbolise?

‘Wearing white’ suggests that the tree is laden with white flower.

According to the poet the tree is wearing white as if it were celebrating Eastertide along with others to mark the resurrection of Christ.

The season being spring that is preceded by a grey winter, the ‘white’ symbolises purity of creation and triumph of life over death. 

3. Which season does the poet talk about?

Though there are two seasons that find mention in the poem i.e. spring and winter, the poet is emphatic about spring. The two clues are:

a)      Wearing white for Eastertide ( Eastertide is celebrated in spring)

b)      Fifty springs are little room.

            Winter as the symbol of old age and death finds an implicit mention in the poem—

a)      ...to see the cherry hung with snow.

4. How old was the poet when he wrote the poem? State the lines from the poem.

When Houseman wrote this poem he was about past twenty. The lines—

‘...Now, of my threescore years and ten

    Twenty will not come again...’ suggest this assumption.

5. ‘And take from my seventy spring a score

It leaves me only fifty more...’ why does the poet say so?

Being a profound scholar, Houseman has alluded to the Bible which says that a man is supposed to live only seventy years. This actually means that one’s life is worthy living till one is seventy. To the poet this little span of seventy years is too brief a moment to relish the beauty that abounds the earth.

In a nutshell, the poet here laments the brevity of life against overwhelming beauty of nature.

6. Has the poet expressed any desire? What and Why?

Life being too short a time, the poet wants to live through all beautiful things that surround him. Having seen the beauty of the cherry tree in spring, he longs to see it again in winter.

 ‘About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow...’

The poet so desired because to him winter is as beautiful as spring.

7. What mood does the poet express?

Lamenting about the brevity of life against enormous stretch of beauty on earth, the poet expresses a poignant and melancholy mood.

Please feel free to write should you need any further help related to this Poem.

 

Why must Bengalis awake...???

(part-1)

Bengalis or the true sons and daughters of Bengal must awake for its own sake. Given its progressive and cosmopolitan outlook largely because of its historical significance for being the driving force of Bengal Renaissance, the Bengali speaking people culturally inherits a questing mind with a romantic view of life and things about themselves.

This romanticism influences much of its ethos that took in its purview an entire precinct of socio-economic and cultural spectrum including religion.

Its emergence in the historical backdrop of pre and post independence India rests largely because of this questing mind and dissident note, which even questioned and refashioned and in some cases revolutionised many pre-conceived thoughts and practices deemed otherwise irreprehensible.

Needless to say a majority of great thinkers, authors, musicians, artists, academics and statesmen etc were born of its soil, and which were later to become the yardstick of anything that implied India.

This precocious development of the Bengali race against a vast humanity that was still much in its natal stage over the entire eastern and northern plains of India had ripples sent across that were both discordant and enlightening at the same time; and the after-effect which has lived up to this day.

The awakening of Bengali mind apart from all other nuances created two distinct contradictory forces in the common psyche, especially among the Hindi speaking people. It was the acknowledgement of this enduring Yardstick at one end and hostility stemming from their racial incapacity on the other. In fact the rest of India barring the South nurtures this antagonism that is deeply rooted in history. It is an overview of a general mindset that has been fuelled by vested interests to further their cause of unrestrained hegemony subservient to the imperialists.

Historically Bengal’s re-awakening dug up two great pitfalls for its people:

1.      A generous, highly accommodating and justice loving cosmopolitan attitude.

2.      A sense of narcissism with its glory and new found identity over the years.

 Both these aspects in one way or the other have shaped its path through numerous social upheavals and violent backlash, which muddled its political uprightness and reduced its masses to petty partisan politics full of gore and futile promises san the intellectual fervour that was once fundamental to its very spirit.

Again on the other hand these two aspects left the people blind to issues that were more prominent and vital from the point of survival as a race and its destiny. It filed them with an intoxication of self-indulgence that superciliously ignored the writings on the wall and subsequently failed to address the growing needs of the time, issues like cultural and economic insulation against outsiders too eager to reap on its riches.

The flawed notion of India.

Irrespective of the many good it might have appealed to the rest of India including Bengal, the flawed notion of being an Indian has much to do in the destruction of Assam and Bengal.

Hindi speaking people who have no history of its own in the ilk of Bengal and southern India began to see these places as Promised Land. With south being insulated much on account of its language, Bengal and Assam fell easy prey to their aggressive onslaught.

In the absence of formidable resistance, Assam much in common with Bengal due to geographical and linguistic proximity suffered the brunt of these people seeking greener pasture. When the Assamese finally realised, the damage had already been done and it was done beyond repair.

Consequently the ethnic population sensing danger of losing land to the outsiders went ahead with the demand of separate statehood and Assam underwent two partitions—one is Mizoram and the other is Tripura.

What was left behind was much of a no man’s land with Assamese compelled to share with others at equal footing fuelling mass scale anguish that eventually gave rise to ULFA.

Though gaining popularity riding on the people’s dissent in its initial stage, ULFA ultimately lost ground to centre’s high handed tactics and its own incapacity. Furthermore terror as a means to political end was bound to end in a fizzle.

With ULFA neutralised, the future of Assamese people remains as elusive as ever with outsiders grabbing their land and opportunities and all set to outbreed them to a minority.

(End of part-1)