The books that we now read, and which appear at bookshops once self-labelled as ‘left’, are less about the (apparently always predominantly white, male, and cishet) themes of revolution, the transformation of the world, or the analysis of complicated political situations.
The team’s objective was to create a time travel experience to access Bengal’s history. The broad heads were Bengal Partition, Museum, Border, Subaltern space and Time & Memory. The focus was on the landmark years: 1905 (Bengal partition ordered by viceroy Lord Curzon), 1943 (Bengal famine), 1946 (The Great Calcutta Killings), 1947 (Independence and Partition), 1958 (Resettlement project for East Pakistan refugees in Dandakaranya), 1971 (Birth of Bangladesh) and 1979 (The Marichjhapi Massacre).
A back-to-back rereading of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and Karl Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in terms of their political visions is not as far-fetched as it seems.
Gandhi did not condemn the scientific temper of the West, but he objected to the use of scientific discoveries against humanity. In fact, as history proves, most scientific and technological advances were made during war with the objective of destroying the countries and people on the other side— with little qualms about them being an inextricable part of one common humanity.
On 16 August 2012, 34 miners of the Marikana platinum mines in South Africa were shot dead by the police. A decade later, the legacy of the brutal incident lngers on.
We sat together in Calcutta at the dining table of the old crumbling 1920s house in which we then lived, my progressive bookseller and myself, discussing these changes in the world. He had been in the bookselling business for a number of years, I remember, and he had only recently taken to selling door to door. But the supply of Soviet books was drying up.
More than a year before this, on 22 May, 1870, Sourindro Mohun Tagore, the man behind this entire initiative, gave a public lecture on music at the Calcutta Training Academy premises as part of the third session of Jatiya Sabha.
The Bnei Menashe consider themselves the descendants of the Biblical Menashe, son of Joseph, who they call Manmasi or Manmasia. In Manipur they are identified as Kukis and as Mizos in Mizoram. After more than fifty years of asserting Jewish claims, the Bnei Menashe, “the children of Menasseh,” were recognised by the Chief Rabbi of Israel (2005) which made them eligible to make “Aliyah” (emigration) to Israel.
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