Food and football apart, nothing perhaps excites the Bengali more than a rally. Whichever party calls one for whatever cause, hundreds of people turn up at Brigade Parade Grounds in the heart of Kolkata to shout ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ with gusto. The first two months of 2019 saw two mega rallies, one by the government in power, the other by the Left. Both saw “record” crowds.
Why are processions, meetings, bandhs and “all such democratic rights” of paramount importance in Bengal? Sumanta Banerjee, social historian and activist who has written seminal works like In the Wake of Naxalbari (1980), takes us on a serio-comic ride to understand where things stand. In Spooky Encounters: Gossip and Banter with Marx , translated from the original Bengali by editor and researcher-documentarist Shampa Banerjee, he summons “the bearded German gentleman” for several face-to-face debates.
The Preamble sets up the premise. “Anybody with a modicum of good sense should want to establish a socialist state that will replace today’s socio-economic system based on oppression, injustice and unequal distribution of wealth. I find it tempting, therefore, to riffle through writings by Marx occasionally, to assess how far he is relevant today, and how much of him has become superfluous?” Banerjee invites a number of historical figures to the tête-à-tête, including Dwarkanath Tagore, Rabindranath’s grandfather; Bengali social reformer Shibnath Shastri; novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay; rival Marx disciples and stalwarts Bhupendranath Datta and Manabendra Nath Roy.
Marx’s encounters leave him with dilemmas — in one, he gets stuck in a bus during a traffic jam because of a procession of workers. A girl breaks down as her mother needs to get to the hospital. An exasperated Marx gets off the bus to address his comrades who can’t be bothered to listen. In another, he has “friendly discussions” with Charu Majumdar, the founder of the Naxalite movement in India, over glasses of ‘Kali-marka’ or deshi liquor. After endless arguments and no conclusions — the original is hilarious, though the translation is equally funny — Marx is whisked off by the Communist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg to fight other battles.
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in
Spooky Encounters: Gossip and Banter with Marx; Sumanta Banerjee, trs Shampa Banerjee, Thema, ₹250
