More Bengali than many Bengalis, the one-time Communist leader, Jolly Mohan Kaul, would have been deeply distressed if West Bengal failed to preserve its identity in the current elections. That danger also loomed ahead in 1977 when some feared that Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s Congress was too much under Sanjay Gandhi’s thumb.
Being also a pragmatist, Jolly would not have been surprised at being inadvertently and posthumously responsible for my abrupt parting from Mumbai’s ironically named Free Press Journal which had earlier offered me its editorship. More of that later. The elections cropped up in conversation earlier this week with a Gujarati shopkeeper in the downmarket west London suburb of Feltham. He was basking on a park bench in the late March sunshine and allowed my wife and me space without breaching social distancing. What’s going to happen to “Mamta” was his immediate question on learning we were from Calcutta. Then, and to our considerable surprise, he warned that the four “dakoos” who rule India, ticking off “Modi, Shah, Ambani, Adani” on the stubby fingers of one hand, were after her blood.
Jolly would have expected the Trinamul Congress, the Congress, the Left parties and the Indian Secular Front to unite in repelling the imperious invader. Although he acknowledged that religion could never be eradicated from the soil and soul of Bengal, and notwithstanding some soldiers of fortune seeking the loaves and fishes of office, the Bharatiya Janata Party is as alien to Bengal’s ethic as Mahmud of Ghazni was to the Somnath temple. The spirituality that tempered Jolly’s political quest could not have been farther removed from either the crude clay images smuggled into the Babri Masjid or the stagey spectacle of a crowned Narendra Modi in ostentatious prostration. Aware that even certain Marxists we both knew performed daily pujas, Jolly held that Jawaharlal Nehru’s secularism was doomed whereas Gandhi’s was not because it respected the power of religion. It’s what men live by. But that cannot justify bigotry or a revival of communal prejudice.
At one level, the concatenation of recent events warns that civilization is under siege. At another, they are a reminder of realities that must be accommodated if basic liberties are to survive. About the time that Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Arvind Subramanian were making a stand in Sonepat, a well-known British broadcaster, Piers Morgan, had to quit the popular Good Morning Britain radio programme for saying he did not believe “a word” that the Duchess of Sussex had said in her notorious Oprah Winfrey interview about racist comments by one of her royal in-laws.
Academia and the media have much in common. Both believe they serve lofty ideals. Both are exalted into vocations. But both must operate within a mundane framework. When told that a free press prevents corruption, Lee Kuan Yew retorted, “But the media itself is corrupted!” Echoing his scepticism, a Singapore editor asked an American holding forth on the rule of law, “Who makes the law?”
No exclusive cadre steeped in virtue mans our universities and media. One brother can be a grocer while another reports for newspapers. Or one brother may work for the telephone corporation and another teach in a school or college. They report to editors or deans and faculty heads who might otherwise be bureaucratic departmental chiefs, run business offices or hold political office. Simplifying the hierarchy, above them are the owners of newspapers and television channels and the supposedly philanthropic business magnates who fund universities.
Methods are much the same all down the line. If grocers can mix chalk with flour and telephone mechanics demand money for quick connections, why should newspaper reporters or school/college teachers not also expect gratification? A dignitary is not transformed into a selfless St Francis of Assisi just by being appointed a university trustee or to a newspaper’s board of directors. For that matter, the worthies who do the appointing may not foul their hands with filthy lucre but at the very least want their point of view propagated. More importantly, they have other business interests that cannot do without political patronage.
There’s less pretence among the British. When a British-Indian newspaper’s owners in London made known their dissatisfaction with their editor in Calcutta, the latter promptly replied that his resignation would be ready before lunch. In contrast, a veteran Indian journalist in Delhi famously resigned with bitter criticism of the paper’s policies only after he was refused a sixth extension.
Jolly was a realist. He understood the limitations of the flesh even as he reached out In Search of a Better World, the title of his memoirs. I can do no better than quote the book’s review that Rudrangshu Mukherjee, now chancellor of Ashoka University, wrote in this newspaper. Jolly was in financial difficulties after leaving the Communist Party of India until another former comrade, Prasanta Sanyal, recommended him for a job in Indian Oxygen where Sanyal worked. Initial resistance to the appointment soon ended.
“The CPI leader, Bhupesh Gupta, who occasionally stayed with Kaul even after the latter had left the party, heard of the resistance and spoke to N. Dandekar who sat with Gupta in the Rajya Sabha. Dandekar was a member of the Swatantra Party, and was the chairman of the Indian Oxygen board. He spoke to the managing director and the path was cleared for Kaul’s appointment. Thus, one former comrade, one full-time communist MP and one Swatantra Party member helped to get employment for an out-of-work former member of the CPI. The power of the network!”
When Jolly died last June, I paid tribute to him in the weekly column, “Global Village”, that I had written for the FPJ for many years. My article was received as usual by the Edit page editor, cleared by the editor and published on July 4, 2020. I thought nothing of it until three days later came an email from one “G.L. Lakhotia, Managing Editor” saying the paper’s “esteemed readers” were “unfamiliar” with Jolly and “were unable to connect with him”. The letter concluded, “In addition, we also received flak from our readers regarding this particular article. As such please note that we won’t be releasing the payment to the said column”.
I responded by saying bluntly that I was discontinuing “Global Village”. My reply also pointed out that “morally and legally” the paper was obliged to pay for a column that was written within the terms of the arrangement and published. I also regretted that the letter was not from the editor to whom my reply was copied. There was no reply. No payment either. The editor and the editorial page editor sent flattering messages indicating they were no party to the managing editor’s decision.
I wonder how Jolly would have reacted. He would undoubtedly have upbraided me for not investigating the FPJ’s political affiliations before starting “Global Village”. But being a practical man, he would probably have accepted that he who pays the piper calls the tune. The BBC’s Andrew Whitehead noted Jolly’s readiness to cut his losses. As secretary of the Port Trust Employees’ Association and a CPI district committee member, he led a peace march to Calcutta’s Maidan on Direct Action Day, 1946 but was too late to prevent bloodshed. “We found dead bodies on the way, so we immediately folded our flags and told the workers: let’s march back, let us try to see if we can save our locality from the riots at least... I think our tactics did pay off... The organised trade union movement in Calcutta was able to... maintain the solidarity of Hindu and Muslim workers.”
It is clear even at a distance of 5,000 miles that West Bengal can say goodbye to such solidarity if the forces of majoritarian triumphalism are not repulsed.
