Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya

The Contemporariness of Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya



I have always felt at one with rebels, wherever they are, because like the artist they want to reform the chaotic world by imposing on it a form of material unity.
So said Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, story-teller, critic and political activist all at one go. A ‘writer labourer’ is how the writer described himself, a man born in a small and remote village of Assam who went on to hold the highest literary position of the country as the president of the Sahitya Akademi at the age of sixty four. Influenced by Gandhiji’s ideals of truth and justice and led by the socialist ideas of Jay Prakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia, Bhattacharya wrote nearly twenty novels, sixty short stories, ten radio plays, a few translations, travelogues, biographies and innumerable essays and articles.
During the Quit India movement he was a student in Cotton College, Guwahati which he left in the middle of the studies in support of the non co-operation movement and went back home. There he started a monthly titled Puberun. Twenty eight years later, he penned the novel Mrityunjaya based on the incidents of 1942 depicting a railway derailment by the freedom fighters. This book won him the Jnanpith Award, the citation of which describes the book as a novel that ‘sums up in miniature as it were, what was happening all over India at that time.’
Then he went to Calcutta for a degree of journalism and worked for an Assamese magazine Banhi as the assistant-editor. While in Calcutta he witnessed the 1946 riots and lost his friend Amulya Barua, the budding poet. The manuscript of his first novel also got burnt along with the body of his friend. Unable to bear the loss of his friend he came back to Guwahati and started working as the assistant-editor of the newspaper Natun Asomiya. In 1947 he joined the Socialist Party newly formed by Jay Prakash Narayan.
In 1950 he went to Ukhrul, a Naga village in Manipur to teach in Christian Missionary School. During his three year stint in the village, Bhattacharya gathered enough material to weave his novel Iyaruingam where he ‘presents the Nagas as a part of the human situation of our country with an imaginative sympathy and understanding which go into the making of a great work of art’ (Brochure, Sahitya Academy). The book won him the Sahitya Academy award. A recent translation of the book is available as Love in the Times of Insurgency brought out by Katha Publications, Delhi.
In 1952 he came back to Guwahati and worked with Ramdhenu as the editor where he continued to work for the next twelve years contributing in every possible way to create an atmosphere of progressive writing. The magazine produced a new generation of young writers, especially poets. This period of the Ramdhenu is known in Assamese literary history as the ‘Age of Ramdhenu’ or ‘The Ramdhenu Yug’.
In 1963 Bhattacharya retired from Ramdhenu and joined Navajug as the editor. In 1958 he married Binita Bhattacharya, a lady with a literary bent of mind who is now engaged in collecting the scattered works of her husband and making his unpublished things available for publication. She is also planning to organise her husband’s collection of books into a library in her quiet and peaceful house by the serene Brahmaputra, near the Nabagraha Temple in Guwahati.
In 1979 he was awarded the Jnanpith. In 1983 he became the Vice President of the Sahitya Akademi and in 1988 the President of the same organisation. In 1994 he was made the Ram Manohar Lohia Professor in Kurukshetra University. During the two years stay in the University he came out with the book The Salient Ideas of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. He was also the President of the Bharatiya Lekhak Sangh and a life-time member of The Institute of Gandhian Thought and Peace studies of the University of Allahabad.
Besides the earlier mentioned novels Bhattacharya wrote Ai (1960), Ballari (1973), Chaturanga (1987), Cinaki Suti (1971), Daini (1976), Kabar Aru Phul (1972), Kalor Humuniah (1982), Munichunir Puhor (1979), Nastachandra (1968), Phul Kunworor Pakhi Ghora (1988), Pratipad (1970), Rajpathe Ringiai (1955), Ranga Megh (1976), Sarat Kunwar (1978) and Sataghni (1965).
Rajpathe Ringiai depicts the confusions of a youth during the first days of independence. The protagonist asks, “If the people have got freedom where is people’s rule? Where is their right over their land? Where is the right of the farmer over his produce? Where is the arrangement for the workers’ establishments? Where is their right to live?” (Translation mine). The ideas expressed by the protagonist are also those of the author. Like Mrityunjaya and Iyaruingam his other novels are also based on incidents of historical importance. Sataghni is written on the backdrop of the Chinese aggression, Kabar Aru Phul on the backdrop of the freedom movement in Bangladesh, Pratipad on the industrial strike of 1939 in the Digboi Oil Refinery. What Bhattacharya says about this novel – “There is no hero or heroine in the novel; all the characters are prisoners of time” – is true of all his novels. The female characters are strong, independent and always fighting for their rights.
The author better known for his novels is also a master of the short story. His stories dealing with historical events of global and national importance besides being seeped in the local flavours of the North Eastern region are scattered over the pages of magazines and newspapers. Only four collections are available, Kolong Ajiu Boi (1987), Satsari (1963), Khiriki Kakhar Akhon (1994) and Eta Purani Golpor Na Rup (2000). Besides giving a bird’s eye view of his times in the short stories, the author had also sowed the seeds of many of his novels in the short stories. For example ‘Sermon on the Mount’ gives us a clue about what is to follow in Iyaruingam.
Out of the ten radio plays, ‘Ahalya’ a verse drama, was published in the magazine Uruli. Another play ‘Bharat’ and a monologue ‘Kusal Kunwar’ are included in the anthology Antarar Natyawali (1984).
He has also written the biographies of Sri Aurobindo, Gopinath Bordoloi, Krishna Kanta Handique, Ambika Raichaudhuri and Chandra Nath Sharma. Russia Yatra (1984) and Simai Amoni Kore (1975) are his travelogues. He has also translated into Assamese D.D.Kosambi’s Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1973), Earnest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rabindra Nath Tagore’s short stories as Ekuri Eta Chuti Galpa (1978), Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Parineeta (1948). The other works of the author include Amar Swadhinota Andolan (1975), Banga Deshar Naba Jagaran Aru Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1970), Derso Bachar Asamiya Sanskriti (1978), Naga Kakar Sadhu (1987), Sabhapatir Abhibhasan (1983), Sambad Sahitya (1975) and Humour and Satire in Assamese Literature (1982).
A few of his works are available in translation. The novels Ai, Mrityunjoya and Sataghni have been translated into Hindi. Iyaruingam and Pratipad have been translated into Bengali. Mrityunjaya and Iyaruingam are also available in English translations. A recent translation of Iyaruingam has been published by Katha as Love in the Times of Insurgency. Sataghni has also been translated into Marathi and Malayalam.
The Contemporary Relevance of the Author: The mainstream India often associates the North East with terrorism and mayhem, flood and other natural disasters. The different states are often clubbed together as a homogeneous entity despite their diversity of land, people and their culture. The region and its people is often viewed by mainstream India as the ‘other’ because of the unfamiliar food habits, dress code, ways of living and social practices. Another factor contributing to the otherness is the physical distance of the region from the mainland and the fact that littler attention is given to the region by the mainstream media. The stories of Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya demolish certain stereotypes about the people from the North-east and to give the willing reader a chance to experience the real North-East.
A common thread that runs through the stories in this collection is that of ethnic conflict and violence not only in the North East but in the whole Indian sub-continent. For example, ‘Riddles’ is set in the 1960’s when violence broke out between the Assamese and the Bengalis on the issue of language. ‘Fazal Mia’, set in Shella, the border area of Meghalaya, during the Indo-Pak war of 1970’s speaks about another kind of violence, i.e. violence brought about by war. Like any other war, this war also had the worst impact on the poor and the powerless. While the rich and the opportunist raked in huge money through smuggling and black marketeering, the penniless had to go without food. ‘A Story Retold’ recapitulates the communal violence in Noakhali of west Bengal in the wake of independence. The protagonist visits the site where Gandhiji came and stayed during the violence and expresses his dismay at the state of the site, a mansion which is now a warehouse and a dirty match box factory. The sentiment expressed that the mansion could very well have been turned into a memorial reminds one of a lecture delivered by Tariq Ali on the 27th of January, 2006 at the Delhi University where he spoke about the need for monuments to be created in Punjab and Bengal to honour those killed during the partition. ‘Sermon on the Mount’, set in a Naga village where all the characters are Nagas, captures the initial stages of the Naga movement and the insistent attempts of a Pastor to bring back the youths from the path of violence to that of peace and righteousness. ‘Netaji and Ingaijang’ describes a Mizo character in conversation with an Assamese. Though it does not deal with violence directly has some relevance in terms of the Mizo revolts that was to follow. The resentment of the Mizo rebels on the plea that the Government of the plains people, that is, the Assamese does not care much for the welfare of the tribal population is voiced by the Mizo character Biyakaliyana. ‘Victim of Intolerance’ is set in a relatively recent period when Assam was reeling under the shadow of terrorism.
Conclusion: It would be a worthwhile exercise to make his works available in English and other Indian languages. That would not only facilitate inter-cultural exchanges but would provide answers to the ongoing ethnic strife in the North Eastern states and in the whole Indian sub-continent.

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