India (56 page)

Stage by abstract stage, from a raw, humiliated concern with the poor and India, to cultural and economic suicide, new compulsions and violations, and a cause far removed from the peasant’s hunger.

The leader of the Naxalite faction was called Charu Mazumdar. Debu knew him well.

Debu said, ‘I was present at the small meeting in Calcutta when Charu Mazumdar first unveiled that policy, of individual killing. He had already spoken of this in the villages, and had sent out letters to individual units. This was the first time he was talking about it in Calcutta, and I actually went with him to the meeting.

‘It was in North Calcutta, in a lower-middle-class home. I remember a short corridor and a small room. The corridor was full
of slippers left by those sitting on the floor in the small room. It was a late-evening meeting, a local meeting.

‘I had tremendous admiration for Charu Mazumdar then, and I have admiration now. He was the most intense person I had ever met. And he truly believed in what he spoke about. He put tremendous faith in the young and the new. He truly loved the peasant –
much
, much more than the love I felt for them. My love was different. He
believed
in the Indian peasant. He admired them.

‘His sense of Indian history was really startling – the essence and dynamics of Indian history. He had no greed, none at all. No sense of personal comfort. There were many thousands of people, at that point, who were prepared to give their lives and follow his command. And he had developed that power without coercion. The only other organization I have known with the kind of power he possessed is the army, and in the army there is a great deal of coercion.

‘He was a thin, short man with glasses. His glasses had very powerful lenses. He generally dressed in shirt and dhoti, or bush shirt and trousers. The clarity of his speech and expression was very great. And this was duplicated in his movements.’ Debu meant that Charu Mazumdar’s movements were economical and precise, without too many gestures. ‘He had enormous energy, his movements were swift. And, by God, he could inspire.

‘He never ever raised his voice, but he could speak with great emphasis. And in that small room in North Calcutta he started speaking. There were two windows at the back of the room, and they were both open. I noticed those windows, because I was worried that people outside would be listening. There was very little in that room. I remember an unpainted wooden table with lots of books on it, and a radio. The radio was important. Do you know why? That was the link to Peking Radio. All Naxalites gave enormous importance to the radio – “where-yesterday-we-were-mentioned-on-Peking-Radio” sort of thing. There was something wrong with me. In my whole life I have never listened to Peking Radio more than twice.

‘There was also a small bare bench at the back. I noticed that no one was willing to sit on it, in spite of the crowd in the room. But ultimately the room became so packed that people had to sit on the bench. Charu Mazumdar was sitting on the floor – that was why
people were reluctant to sit on the bench: they didn’t want to be higher than he was.

‘People were smoking. That was why the windows were open. I was smoking myself. The atmosphere was still free and easy. I think some tea was brought in, but not for everybody – it couldn’t get to everybody in the room.

‘Charu Mazumdar started by mentioning certain successes the group had had in Bengal and in certain other parts of the country. “You are doing very good work here, I know. And they are frightened of us. You can expect them to attack. Our experience has proved that killing individual oppressors helps to mobilize the people, because the people then perceive that the oppressor can be
destroyed
. Therefore I have just issued this letter.” He read out the letter from a handwritten script. It was the letter calling for individual killing. Then he called for questions.

‘I was shocked. But I think my own roots came into play then – as it always does. I was shocked, but simultaneously thrilled. The thrill was: “Have we at last found the way?” It didn’t enter my mind to question what had been given as fact: that killing had generated large-scale enthusiasm among the poor.

‘My shock was on two counts. One, it was so close to murder. But this I rationalized: it’s not murder, it’s execution. People weren’t going to be killed just like that. The individual killings were going to be discussed and agreed upon by the group. The second shock was that virtually all the gurus of Marxism had warned against terrorism. And this sounded like terrorism.

‘The questions that came were essentially like this: “What do we do in the cities?” “What happens if the landlord is supplanted by another oppressor?” There were many tactical questions. I was one of the last to ask a question, and I asked it in a very humble way, I must tell you, because, compared to the fellows there, I was from the wrong class, and the fellows sitting there were more active in the field than I was. The question I asked was about Mao and Lenin having warned against terrorism. So how, theoretically, could we support this?

‘Charu Mazumdar answered us all. Very quietly, convincingly. We were all convinced.’

I said to Debu, ‘Tell me a little more about him.’

‘He was about fifty-eight. Wizened, fair. He was from a landlord’s family in North Bengal, and his father was a famous doctor,
well-to-do. He was very bright in his studies and did well. He was pulled into the swadeshi movement’ – the nationalist movement – ‘and from there he transferred to the peasant movement, and made a name for himself. He became a member of the Communist Party. What he did was to transform a militant reform movement – protecting the sharecropper – into the beginning of a revolutionary movement. He did that by deciding that the battle would be carried on against the
state.
’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that it was madness?’

‘At the time I didn’t think it was madness. I don’t think it is madness now. If there is to be revolution, it has to take on the state.

‘That meeting in North Calcutta lasted for three hours. Charu Mazumdar’s initial statement was for about an hour and 15 minutes. The discussion was about another hour. Afterwards, little groups would talk to him about their local problems, and leave.

‘Up to that time the Naxalites had been occupying schools, defacing statues, etc. Isolated incidents. These things I objected to rather seriously. Up to about April 1970 Charu Mazumdar and others assured me that they were the result of over-enthusiasm. I remember now with hindsight that it was the lower-middle-class and rural schools that were made targets. There was no attempt at touching the elite schools.

‘When the directive came that “China’s chairman is our chairman”, I became very angry, and went to see him. I said, “If the Chinese start coming I will be one of the first with a gun in my hand to stop them.” On that topic he immediately kept quiet. But I think that the personal equation we had built up since 1968 – he had stayed in my house, and we had had long discussions – that equation snapped. Later I wrote him a letter. It was a long letter, full of theoretical backing to things I opposed. He didn’t reply. At that time the killings had started. The party had moved underground, and all communication was cut.

‘That was how I left the movement. From 1970 to 1972 I was involved with a parallel organization. We were mainly doing propaganda. We were hunted by the police. We had to hide from both sides.

‘The first policeman was killed in Calcutta in early May, 1970, in a bomb attack. After mid-1970 the action became more general. Traffic policemen were being killed, because they were easy game.
There was a funny side. The traffic police were issued arms. The Naxalites snatched the arms, so the traffic policemen chained the arms to themselves. Simultaneously there began the killing of informers.

‘And when you start killing
informers
, then you really open the can of worms. You do not refer to his class – you cannot refer to his class, because he has to be within your own ambit to be an informer. Again, with hindsight, I also see that there were no attacks against big targets, the big industrialists, the big landlords.

‘And further divisions appeared in the Marxist-Leninist camp. More groups left. By 1973 the Marxist-Leninist camp was divided into 20 factions. The police and their gangs had killed several thousands. By 1973 the movement – that phase of it – was finished.

‘I came out of hiding in 1972. The police knew about my break with Charu Mazumdar. The last time I was questioned in detail was in 1972. My great luck was that my last arrest had been in April 1970 – before the first policeman was killed in Calcutta. Then I had gone underground.

‘I am doing nothing now. I think in some ways our country has more respect and honour in the world than at that time. From beggars we have become borrowers. I am exercised by the gap between rich and poor, exercised by the lack of patriotism amongst the power-brokers, exercised by the number of industries going sick. And I am exercised by the fact that borrowers generally end up begging.’

Debu didn’t tell me about the end of Charu Mazumdar. That I heard from someone else. He was arrested in Calcutta in 1972, and died soon afterwards. He was an asthmatic, and when he was arrested he had a tube of oxygen with him. He must have suffered continuously in the damp and heat of Bengal.

Ashok’s first story had been about his attempt to get into marketing. His second story had been about his marriage, his break with the past. His last story was about his life in advertising, and his sighting of the Calcutta boxwallah world, just when that world was about to disappear, giving way to the cruder, richer business world of post-independence India.

Ashok said, ‘My first experience of the Calcutta boxwallah was when as a trainee account executive in an advertising firm I was
taken to my first client meeting, and was introduced to this very senior executive in the marketing division of the company. The man was portly and appeared to be quite jovial. He was smoking an imported brand of cigarette, and – this was the middle of May, which is something in Calcutta – he was wearing a suit. His office was air-conditioned. The general atmosphere was of a man in a plush office with a leisurely approach to life.

‘He appeared to be in no great hurry to discuss the business in hand. We were going into all kinds of trivia about life in general, the cricket series, a little office politics. All kinds of things were being talked about from 11 or so until 12 or 12.15. And then there was this long pause, and it seemed almost a pity that we had to set aside the general discussion.

‘My boss broached the subject of business, and this was gone through with great dispatch. I was just observing; I was only a trainee. The business side of things was finished in a quarter of an hour. It was now about 12.30. Lunch was looming. The client asked my boss if he had a luncheon engagement. My boss said no. The client said, “Perhaps we ought to discuss a little more business over lunch.”

‘My boss instructed me to run to the office and take out an IOU for 500 rupees, and join them at a five-star hotel. The client wasn’t inviting us – it wasn’t known for clients to invite advertising agency personnel to lunch. The lunch was to be on us. I suppose I was quite excited at that moment. I had heard a great deal about client entertainment, but I hadn’t done any, or been part of it, at that time. The lunch that day started at 12.45 and finished at 3.30. Everybody was happy at the end.

‘This way of doing things went on till the early 70s. The big companies had more or less a monopoly in their respective fields. They didn’t have to sell. They merely allocated. There was never enough to meet the demand.

‘That’s changed now. There are a lot more companies making the products, and companies are having to battle it out – to meet production volumes, to place them in the market, to persuade the customer. So all of a sudden companies had no room for people who merely dressed well, could talk to the boss’s wife, could play a round of golf, and hold their drink. The country itself had started setting up business schools. To a large extent they tended to be
textbook American models, and this created problems for companies. But these institutes enabled companies to get a shortlist of candidates. It became a status symbol to recruit an MBA.

‘People who in earlier days would have gone up the ladder now began to flounder, because they didn’t have the talent to hold down their job. Whereas, before, office life was a pleasant interval between the company apartment and the club house, now, in my firm, if I want to rise, I have some sacrifices to make. For example, I might have to travel 20 days a month. If you’re an all-India organization, you can travel to monitor what’s happening in the field. You’re also doing it because your colleagues are doing it, and it can be seen as a sign of your commitment to your organization.

‘In the old days, if an executive went to the wedding of, say, the niece of a dealer, that would have been seen by the dealer as a most enormous favour, and the executive would have been suitably rewarded by the dealer. Today the executive goes to that wedding to keep in with the dealer. So the whole thing now changes. These dealers most of them speak Hindi, and the older social accomplishments – speaking English, dressing well, playing golf – no longer matter. If you’re travelling 20 days a month, and you’re the sales manager, you’re spending all those days in the company of the dealers and your field staff, and almost every evening is a fairly heavy drinking evening.

‘I can’t say that when I started I had any idea that marketing would be the way it is now. But in my company I am specifically on the advertising side, and this gives me creative satisfaction. Social graces are still a bonus for an executive; they can add sheen to an executive’s profile. But what the executive is really expected to have are qualities of a hard-nosed entrepreneurial businessman which is the kind of man he is dealing with. In his company he has to be a sophisticated communicator; and when he is sitting in a poky little dealer’s shop somewhere he has to speak a different kind of language. He is probably drinking tea out of a dirty tumbler and yet that dealer probably makes infinitely more than the executive.