Sunday, February 25, 2001		Speaking generally

The real tragedy of Gujarat
By Chanchal Sarkar

THE idiom is ‘old men forget’, but it isn’t true. The young forget just as much and just as soon. A few more days and the great Indian public will forget much of the Gujarat earthquake. Only the hundreds of thousands who have lost their dearest ones, homes and livelihood will remember. Perhaps, too, only they will understand how so terrible a calamity becomes a political football, otherwise why are such big lies told?

In today’s world countries are quick to send specialists to trace people under slabs of broken concrete, sniffer dogs, packets of water, food and medicines. And with them, from the main television channels of the world, come cameras and reporters.

Without doubt, we shall hear that those foreign correspondents were biased, that they only chose to photograph whatever showed the Indian Government in a bad light, that things were not so bad as they were painted to be and that the administration took control of the situation very quickly and started putting things right.

One doesn’t have to go to Bhuj, Ahmedabad or Chowpada to know that things are very, very bad and that the administration is unable to really coordinate or cope, that, despite the government’s claims, many villages and small towns have received no help whatever and are trying to pull themselves up from the rubble that is their lives.

That their greatest anxiety is not how to pass today’s night and day but what will happen with all their resources gone, all their housing destroyed, their bread-earners dead. The government has been able to give no assurance on this score whatever and one former victim has just said that even those who were promised Rs. 25,000 for their houses after the Latur earthquake have still not been paid. How many have been paid compensation after the Bhopal disaster? No, television has made hiding impossible unless one deliberately tries to, but obscuring the truth is still very much possible.

The famous history teacher at Calcutta’s Presidency College, Prof. Susobhan Sarkar had written a small book about Rabindranath Tagore. In it he wrote that Tagore’s Gora was the best Bengali novel ever written. Maybe one cannot accept that as undeniable. There are other great novelists who have written major and unforgettable works but that does not take away from the fact that Gora is a very great novel, which one can read over and over again.

Of course Gora has a plot, in fact two or three interconnected plots, it has very remarkable characters starting with. Anandamoyee, then Gora himself, the son of an Irish military officer who died in the Mutiny. His wife, who had taken shelter in Anandamoyee’s home, died in giving birth to Gora. Gora was never told of this and believed himself to be Anandamoyee’s son and she loved him, if that were possible, more than any son of her own. Then there were other remarkable characters — Sucharita whom Gora eventually married, her father Pareshbabu, a beautiful character, Lolita, her sister who falls in love with Gora’s dearest friend Benoy.

But the real charm of the book, which never fades in a hundred readings is that through the plot are discussed the problems of India at that time, early 19th century. The dangers of fanaticism, the relationship between the British rulers and Indians, educated and uneducated, the importance of elevating the status of women, the concept of India as a great country into which may religions and civilisation had flowed, child marriage, caste conflict (at that time) between Sanatan Hinduism and Brahmoism, which was the reformist but which could, on occasion, dogmatic and rigid nevertheless.

Reading or rather, re-reading Gora one is struck how the eternal truths about religion, patriotism, love and friendship have not changed. Nor has the message of restraint. In the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake now hundreds of young people want to rush to Gujarat to help. Here in the message of restraint of Tagore becomes relevant. What can these young people do now in Gujarat? If they were doctors or nurses, they could go by all means. If they knew carpentry, to build shelters, yes they would be of help. If they knew about public health, they could certainly go. Otherwise they will only stand in the way of those trying to clear the debris, bring back water and make life flow again. They would be consuming food and water which should go to the victims. They might perhaps fall ill and lay claim to the help of doctors and makeshift hospitals.

The agony of Gujarat will not lift in a few days or even a few weeks. Help will be needed for many months and it is at a later stage, that the help of the young will be needed. Children who have lost their parents will need succour, the badly injured and disabled will have to be helped to rise above their disability; those who have lost their livelihood must be helped to earn again. That is the time when young people should read Gora to learn what love of country and its people really means.