NELit review

POST script 3
JANUARY 22, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

Radical Humanism in Sanglot Fenla

AMIT R BAISHYA

PAGE

TURNERS
KC BARAL
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HIS article is a follow-up to Aruni Kashyaps article on Parag Dass Sanglot Fenla published in Seven Sisters Post on December 4. Aruni briefly mentions the torture sequences in the novel at the end of his article. My article elaborates on the representation of torture in the novel, because Parag Dass radical humanism is evident from these sequences. Aruni correctly argues that the novel is not an apologia for violence and that it forms part of Dass larger social and humanist project. However, we have to recognise that Sanglot Fenla is an intensely partisan novelit does make its sympathies for a particular version of revolutionary action very clear. In situations of conflict, a position of neutrality or a transcendent viewpoint is unavailable for writers and intellectuals. If politics is a hidden state of war in normal conditions, then emergency scenarios sharpen the friendenemy divide. Reading Sanglot Fenla today reminds us of those violent, conflict-ridden days of the 1980s and 90s when partisanship was very much a sign of the times. At the same time, it is also a deeply ethical and humane text. The partisan viewpoint does not blind Das to the real effects of dehumanisation that conflict can engender. This is most evident in the treatment of torture in the text. Torture, like rape, is a forcible imposition of a corporeal self on another body. Our sense of feeling at home in our worlds arises from the unconscious or subconscious comfort we feel in the imagined wholeness of our own bodies. Torture assaults our sense of self at a fundamental ontological level. Jean Amery, a survivor of Nazi torture camps, provides one of the most searing analyses of this in his At the Minds Limits. Amery claims that torture absolutely destroys a subjects trust in the world. Through torture, the Other forces his/her corporeality on Me and denies Me any recourse to resistance. I become absolutely helpless. The torturer has to be a sadist; the question of humanity in the act of torturing simply does not arise. If the tortured becomes a mass of disintegrating flesh, the torturer imagines himself a tool who with one twist of the hand can make the other being squeal. Amery suggests that sadism is an existential pathology in which it appears as the radical negation of the other...a denial of the social principle

Photo: Hseng Noung Lintner

GG

We didnt kill them because of any personal grudge. Our superiors ordered us to kill them. We had to kill them G G
Sanglot Fenla begins an exploration of the interiority of the torturer through that of two guerrillas belonging to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) [A fictional name for ULFA]: Rana and Naba. The chapter Lakhipathar, March 15, 1991 is set a few days after the Indian army destroyed the militant camps in Lakhipathar. Diganta visits the camp on a stock-taking mission after the army operation and has an exchange with Rana and Naba: How many people did you kill here? queried Diganta. The youth named Rana glanced at his comrade. Then without hesitation he said, About 30-40, Id estimateAfter a little while, Diganta again asked them Didnt you recoil from killing so many people? How do you feel now?Rana answered, Why should we feel any remorse? We didnt kill them because of any personal grudge. After they were judged as enemies of the people, our superiors ordered us to kill them. Therefore, we had to kill them.Diganta did not press the issue further. What purpose would it serve to blame

Rare pictures of ULFA cadres from a forthcoming photographic history of insurgency in the Northeast by Rajeev Bhattacharyaa

OTHER

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these two? Each member of the organisation had been taught to follow the orders of the leadership to the letter. Who could question that? (121). Diganta reaches the heart of the guerrilla camp with Rana and Naba. Only a few bamboo structures remain. Digantas gaze falls on an elevated changghor in the middle of the camp. When he asks what that structure was meant for, Rana replies that it was their jailthe KIA often imprisoned be-

trayers people considered enemies of society. It was a huge structure ringed by bamboo poles on all sides. Diganta asks him how the prisoners slept. Rana replies that question of sleeping did not arise. The floor of the structure was covered by about one foot of mud. The prisoners had to stand or sit there. Appalled, Diganta queries how long the prisoners could stay alive in that fashion. Rana laughs nonchalantly and says that after staying in the mud like that for a day or two, the prisoners skins would dry or begin to peel off. Then the partisans would bring them out, dry their skins in the sun and herd them back to the cage. Very often, after a week or so, they would be shot dead. Diganta was curious to

know how the prisoners were killed. Rana answers at length: That depended on the orders of the superiorsIf the crime was of a serious nature, then we would torture the prisoner slowly before his death. Sometimes we would chop off their limbs before killing them, sometimes wed pour boiling water on them On the first day, wed punch a hole in their earlobes with an airgun. Then wed chain them to the trees by their earlobes. Because they feared tearing their ears off, they wouldnt dare to escape. The next day wed take them to the prisonAfter being in the prison for about a day or two theyd beg us to end their lives. It was great fun watching their state then (126-7, emphasis mine). Diganta is horrified. The orders of the leadership had transformed these young boys from revolutionaries into sadistic killing machines. The blame for this, he ruminates, lay entirely with the leadership of the organisation (an observation Aruni astutely makes in his article). Undoubtedly, he thinks, punishment is a necessary part of the organisational structure; but, is it correct or justified to encourage such extreme forms of cruelty? Was the organisation going to create a better society on the back of such barbaric inhumanity? The novel then shifts the gaze to the tortured. In a later chapter titled Moukhuwa Chapori, 20 October, 1991, Diganta and a few other guerillas engage in a crossfire with the Indian army after their hideout is betrayed. Diganta is knocked unconscious and captured by the army. He is taken to Xorhiyotuli, which Das directly refers to as a concentration camp. Diganta is electrocuted, his toenails are taken out, he is hit everywhere with a stick, punched repeatedly on his chest and belly after being slung upside down and his skin is scraped off his back. He loses all sense of time and place. However, in this chapter, Das inserts a curious little episode that provides the basis for a complex ethical response. Diganta has been beaten to pulp by the brutal army officers and loses consciousness, coming awake the following morning in his cell. His broken body is shaking uncontrollably. He doesnt know how long he remained like that. Suddenly, he heard the door of his cell opening. A young turbaned Sikh officer peered inside. Probably Digantas condition aroused his compassion. He went out and brought a torn blanket and covered Digantas body with it. It was as if the Sikh soldiers compassion was not for the broken body, but rather what that body truly represented in terms of its value to the respondent. Even in his helpless state, the very thought of this brought hope to Digantas mind (121). In the brief moment when the Sikh officer reaches out to Digantas broken body, acknowledges his pain and reads his body in terms of what it represented in terms of its value we notice the emergence of space where enemies appear before each other as human agents. It provides a glimpse of how Parag Dass radical humanism critically undercuts his partisan sympathies and highlights what Aruni calls his search for an alternative. A radically human alternative! T

Director of English and Foreign Languages University, Northeast Campus, Shillong, KC Baral is a wellknown critic and writer. He tells Seven Sisters Post that one should not just read but have dialogues with books
u What does literature mean to you? Do you think it has any relevance in our day-to-day lives? According to you, does it have anything to do with all that is happening around us? t Literature is always on the side of life. It teaches us how to respect life and how to remain human when humanity is embattled. It is universal as it brings home infinite creative possibilities and has relevance not only for today but for tomorrow as well. Literature depicts the here and now, our existential conditions, and also transcends them in asking why things happen as they do while proposing alternatives. From the mundane to the ideological to the spiritual, literature is the only human creation that transports us to the unknown and unknowable.

u How close is your relation with literature in general, and with literature of the Northeast in particular? t I have been a student and also a teacher of literature for long. It is an intimate domain for me; Im also an amateur writer of sorts. I know most of the writers from Northeast writing in English and in vernacular personally. Im really grateful to most of them, for their generosity in sharing their works with me, and often gifting me with their publications. I edited Earth Songs: Stories from Northeast India, a volume of stories in English from the region, for Sahitya Akademi a few years back. Im a participant, sometimes a critic and most of the time, a passionate admirer of the freshness and quality of literature here and of the writers commitment. u What future do you see for literature from the Northeast? t NE literature has already arrived with the force of its plural voices and articulations. The future is already inscribed and secured, for I strongly feel that the creative energy that circulates as well as manifests in the written words holds immense possibilities.

NEW PRINTS
AGHARI SURJYA
Kaberi Kachari Rajkonwar Sanjiv Bora (Illus.) Pratyay Prakashan, 2011 `95, 11 pages Hardcover/ Poetry N anthology of poetry with colourful illustrations

My Homeland
In pensiveness and in subjectivity, My mind hovers over the times that were When touch down is but an aerial feel, My soul touches base in matters more than one Of a childhood spent in games, Of flowers and seasons in the rain When running after dragon flies was a pastime too serious To think of a career was all but tedious When running in the fields was akin to life... Oh such were the joys of childhood alike

ipen
Tonight
Tonight again, these tiny quiet neem flowers Your breath is turning white Your entire body is turning white And a fragile white virgin night Is running around your first monsoon tresses So thick, noiseless for whom are you waiting like this at the window? So blue, quiet whom are you searching for like this in the moonlit grass? For whom are you waiting like this, does he have on his body the smell of ripe, lush fields With both hands have you pulled up a laden branch Are the flowers falling all over your body On the edge of your breasts and the tresses of the nights? Are the neem flowers falling Are you getting drenched In the crisp festive night?

u Name one book that had a lasting impact on you. In what way? t There are many books that have sensitised me to multiple things. As one grows up, it is difficult to stick to only one type of book; reading habits and choice of themes change. Among the few authors whose works that I love to return to are Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov, Thomas Manns Death in Venice, Ben Okris The Famished Road, Milan Kunderas The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Raja Raos Kanthapura. Im also a fan of Oriya writers such as Fakir Mohan Senapati, Gopinath Mohanty and Surendra Mohanty.

ITIHAXAR RENGONIRE TIPAM

Anu Sonowal Pratishruti Prakashan, 2011 `35, 56 pages Hardcover/ Non-fiction

Today I have perfumes that smell and allure But what is it about the smell of the land that overpoweringly enduresIn times of sadness it gives me hope That little tinge of HOME as I know, is still within my scope No matter where or how far I go, The touch of my land shall linger within me In joys so sweet and memories so fresh I shall think of a HOME I never left. In coming back to it, as lovers who never parted be Home is the smell of my lover I never left for thee In corners and nooks I shall discover home again, In a scratch here or a song sung there, I shall recollect it all with pain Of friends and lovers, in loving memory they come all As my eyes delight in places that were mine, I touch and feel and go back in time When love and life stood still as time As if for me waiting for a lifetime My eyes moist with the song of joy as I touch the land I never forgot, Of friends and loved ones, just a whisper away Never shall I smell the same again As I drench myself in my HOMELAND again As the wheel of my dreams do a touch down on the soil of joy Years of childhood come back at once When the mind all at once rings in joy My land, my land... here I come All over and over again.

u What book would you recommend for our readers and why? t Reading is a matter of personal choice. One should read and keep on reading, for each culture has its habit of reading. We in India culturally patronise listening and speaking over reading. My suggestion would be not just to read a book but to listen to it and have a continuous dialogue with it. Only then is meaningful reading possible.

TUG-OF-WORD
I Who wrote the poem Barak River You Are Beautiful? A. Temsula Ao B. Thangjam Ibopishak C. Ilabanta Yumnam I Which of these writers was awarded the Sahitya Akademi for the Bodo language in 2011? A. Janil Kumar Brahma B. Mangalsingh Hazowary C. Premananda Mosahari I Which of these is a poetry collection in Karbi? A. Sengwe Amir Sikidupupe B. Lammet Esang C. Akemi Karbi Lamthe Amarjang

A
A HISTORY OF ASSAM
Edward Albert Gait Spectrum Publication, 2011 `295, 388 pages Paperback/ Non-fiction

look at some of the historical aspects of Tipam. Handy for historylovers and tourists alike

PRANJIT BORA BARPETA TRANS: ANURADHA RAJKUMARI GOHAIN DELHI

Ans 1. C

2. C

3. A

N elaborate history of the state that is not only used by students as a prescribed textbook, but by researchers as well

MAITREYEE B CHOWDHURY USA