Looking back without anger

When the Bengali edition of this book was launched at the Calcutta Book Fair in 1999, some felt that this invaluable account of the Tebhaga movement needed to be translated into English. Otherwise, the present generation, which seems to be existing on borrowed nostalgia, would have no idea of those tumultuous times when scores of young men, after years of participation in the national movement, gravitated towards communism.

The oral reminiscences of Abani Lahiri, painstakingly taking down through in-depth interviews by Ranjit Dasgupta, reveal a world of idealism, which is lost today. The core of the book contains memories of the Tebhaga movement, which started in 1930, and ends with Lahiri's withdrawal from full time party work in 1952.

What comes through strongly is the idealism of leaders like Lahiri. An incident illustrates the fact. The Anushilan Samity, of which Lahiri was a member, had wanted a repeat of the Chittagong armoury raid. But shortage of funds made the procurement of arms difficult. Lahiri had a plan and he put it into force. " I knew where the family jewellery was kept and also where the key to the almirah was. I had thought that I would only take the ring and the gold mohur (coin) that I had received during my holy-thread ceremony. But when I actually started picking up the jewellery, I thought, why take only what was mine!...The cause was sacred - the freedom of the motherland. So I picked up the jewellery and left informing anyone." However, the armed uprising never took place and armed uprising never took place and Lahiri never found out if arms had been procure with the money. Lahiri was gradually attracted to Marxism and he explains in detail why the search for " a new path had become inevitable." A part of the answer lay in the fact that parties like Anushilan and Jugantar had reached a dead end. Magistrates were being killed, but to what purpose? The "search" was not easy but ultimately Lahiri embraced the cause and he recalls that, " In early 1932, we had gone to jail as participants in Gandhiji's satyagraha struggle. At the end of the year we came out of jail as soldiers of the revolutionary movement."

Lahiri was initially given the responsibility of leading the student organization in 1940 and their movement (against the Holwell monument ) started in July. However, Lahiiri proposed to the leaders that he join the peasants' movement. His proposal was accepted and he went to Dinajpur.

Lahiri felt that feudal oppression and state repression could not be understood by staying in Calcutta and one had to actually visit the places to see what was going on and find out how the peasants could be mobilized. On his arrival in North Bengal, Lahiri took great pains in learning Rajbansi, the local language.

Those interested in the Tebhaga movement are aware of the different, and offen contradictory, versions of the struggle. According to Moni Singh, chairman of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, after 1971, " Tebhaga was a struggle for the reform of the exploitative feudal system. The Communist Party and the kishan sabha had conducted the struggle from that perspective." Singh says the struggle was not for the seizure of power, which would have been madness.

The Tebhaga movement is probably the most memorable struggle of the century in Bengal, barring the Naxalite movement . Yet the struggle was not all-embracing and did not draw the support of the educated urban and rural middle classes. Also, the movement did not impinge on the Bengali consciousness the way the Telengana movement had done. In Telengana , the peasants look up arms to protest against feudal oppression and to fight for Vishal Andhra. As a result, the struggle between 1946-51 became a struggle for Telugu national identity. Tebhaga, on the other hand, was limited to the Doors in Jalpaiguri.

Lahiri admits the limitations, failures and mistakes of the movement. He also admits that his sense of discipline prevented him from protesting against some decisions made by the party. Maybe, there is a lesson here. Dasgupta's queries are discreet, yet penetrating. He draws the veteran out and we are the richer for it. The appendices and other notes will prove valuable for the reader.

-Arunjyoti Basu
-The Telegraph (20.4.2001)