The Royal Bengal Lion-tamer
World-renowned Suresh Biswas debuted to great acclaim in Argentina
Image: The Telegraph
In 1970, a comic strip was published in the annual issue of a Bengali children’s magazine called Manihar. The hero of the strip, Bangadesher Ranga, was a fearless Bengali animal trainer living in Brazil. And his name was Suresh Biswas.
“The story was imaginary but the character was based on Biswas,” says Swagata Dutta Burman, who edited a volume of the collected works of illustrator Mayukh Chowdhury, the creator of the comic strip. There is mention of Biswas in one of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda stories too. But who exactly was Colonel Suresh Biswas?
Recently, an 1899 biography of the man was republished by Jadavpur University Press. This book by H. Dutt — titled Lieut. Suresh Biswas: His life and Adventures — and another biography in Bengali by Upendrakrishna Bandyopadhyay published in 1905 were the primary sources of information about Biswas for the longest time.
We know from these that Biswas, born into a Vaishnava middle-class family in Nathpur, Nadia, was an independent spirit and a rebel even when he was a boy. At 14, after an altercation with his father, he left home and converted to Christianity. Soon after, he started looking for a livelihood. The job hunt first took him to Rangoon and then Madras, after which he boarded a ship that sailed for London.
Once in London, Biswas did all kinds of odd jobs to stay afloat — he was a newspaper boy, a pedlar, an acrobat in a circus. It was at a circus company in Kent, a county in South East England, that he learned to be a lion-tamer.
The first independent mention of Biswas’s presence in Europe can be found in the publicity material for the World’s Fair (1881-82). They show him at the cage door with the lions seated behind. He is dressed in boots, red trousers and sash, blue jacket and turban. He also sports a luxuriant moustache. “He was allowed to give an exhibition of his wonderful mastery over the most ferocious and intractable beasts in the World’s Fair held at the Royal Agricultural Hall in London,” writes his biographer Dutt.
When Maria Barrera-Agarwal, attorney, scholar, writer, translator and married to a Calcuttan, read about Ray’s Bengali lion-tamer in Brazil, she was curious. A native Spanish speaker born in Ecuador, she looked up the government archives in Brazil and unearthed a fascinating story.
Biswas had arrived in South America for the first time in 1885, along with a tiger and two lions he had trained while in the employ of famed menagerie owner, Karl Hagenbeck of Hamburg. He had been contracted by The Carlo Brothers’ Equestrian Company and Zoological Marvel to perform with the wild cats and an elephant named Bosco.
Image: The Telegraph File
A young Biswas debuted with his wild cats to great acclaim in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His success and top billing followed him to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where the royal family visited the circus to see his performance.
From Brazil, he went back to Hamburg, only to return in 1886. Some documents Barrera-Agarwal dug up, reveal his age at the time to be 26. The occupation noted against his name in the ship’s papers read “kunstler”, which is German for performing artiste. However, in a letter to his uncle dated spring of 1887, he writes that he has been transferred to St. Cruz, a village near Rio de Janeiro, to look after the horses of his cavalry regiment — indicating that in less than a year’s time he had decided to switch careers. He joined the PMDF, a military corps set up to protect the government of Brazil and the capital city.
Dutt sheds some light on the mystery of the great switch. It seems during a show in Rio, he caught the attention of a doctor’s daughter, Maria Augusta Fernandez. And it was she who gently suggested that she would like to see him in a soldier’s uniform. (In 1951, a member of the Indian consulate in Brazil sought the help of a local newspaper to trace Biswas’s family. He met with his wife, Maria Augusta, who spoke of her late husband very fondly.)
Corporal Biswas eventually rose through the ranks. It seems he showed such exceptional courage at the battle of Nitheroy, an 1893 naval uprising, that thereafter he was made first lieutenant.
Though in Indian lore Biswas is often referred to as colonel, Barrera-Agarwal points out that he never became one. When Biswas died in 1905 at the age of 47, he was captain.
Biswas continued to write letters to his uncle Kailash Chander all his life. In one of them he writes, “I will soon go away from here and invent something that will enable me to travel, because, by travelling only I am happy, for, this gives the idea and nourishes it, of reaching home some day…”
But home he never managed to return to. Perhaps he didn’t try hard enough, though it was on his mind all through as we gather from his letters. His iteration about how he, a vagabond, had done well, his pointed queries about his father who had disinherited him when he was barely out of his teens, and his wish to see his mother again.
In the Introduction to the 2018 republished version of Dutt’s biography of Biswas, Barrera-Agarwal writes: “The need of a hero is indispensable in human society.”
In the last available letter to his uncle, Biswas writes, “I have had several letters addressed to me by many young men of Calcutta, asking me if there is no means of coming here in Brazil. I shall answer them separately.”
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online Edition / Home> Culture / by Paromita Sen / November 18th, 2018
Kolkata International Film Festival screens rare Indian language films
Films like “Kittath Preeti” (in Koda), “Boldu” (Tulu), “Navleri” (Lambani), “Death Certificate” (Kurmi) and “Nabon” (Khasi) are being screened under this section at the festival.
Kolkata :
Giving light to the diversity of India, Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) is showcasing a bouquet of rare Indian Language films including Nagasmese, Lambani, Jasari, Kurbi languages for the first time.
“I got many film entries from these languages. Maybe the quality of the films are not that good like that of a ‘Pather Panchali’ or ‘Sholay’ but they are good in their own way,” curator of ‘Unheard India’ Shantanu Ganguly, told the media here.
“Moreover, people need to know about these languages,” he added.
He mentioned that people came to know about the Jasari language cinema only after “Sinjar” directed by Sandeep Pampally won the Best Feature Film in Jasari award at the National Film Awards in April.
“‘Sinjar’ is also India’s first island film as it was entirely shot in Lakshwadeep. Jasari is the colloquial language spoken there,” Ganguly said.
The film stands against terrorism and speaks about two women held as captives by the Islamic State terror group, their ordeal and how they survive a communal situation in capital Kavaratti.
It stars Malayalam actors Srinda Arhaan, Mythili, Musthafa and Sethulaksmi.
“Nana A Tale Of Us” directed by Tiakumzuk Aier is a film in Nagamese language spoken by a section of people in Nagaland.
“There are filmmakers making Nagamese films since the 1990s but it doesn’t make a cut to the film festivals. There are documentary filmmakers but for fiction — there are few,” Aier told IANS.
He said that the Church is supporting ‘clean election campaign’ in his state and they have produced the film as it is based on the specific issue. It talks about the moral sense and how societal evils have affected their lives.
Naganatha N. Joshi, the producer of the film “Saakibaayi” in Banjaara language (also known as Lambani) spoken in Karnataka, had to mortgage his house to make the film. His wife Premalatha N. Joshi is the director.
“We didn’t have any artist, we taught commoners and made them act. My film is based on the life of a woman of Banjaara community,” Naganatha said.
Films like “Kittath Preeti” (in Koda), “Boldu” (Tulu), “Navleri” (Lambani), “Death Certificate” (Kurmi) and “Nabon” (Khasi) are being screened under this section at the festival.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Nation / by IANS / November 15th, 2018
18
Kolkata pays its tributes
What struck British Deputy High Commissioner Bruce Bucknell on his visit to the Bhawanipore War Cemetery in Kolkata on Sunday was the age of the fallen soldiers of the First and Second World Wars.
“In most of the war cemeteries I have visited across the world there is one thing common, the age of soldiers…,” Mr. Bucknell said, speaking about the horrors of war on the 100th anniversary of the First World War. The age inscribed on most of the 938 graves clearly points out that most of those died were young men in their twenties and thirties.
Of the 938 graves, 617 graves are of the soldiers who laid their lives in the Second World War and about 95 graves are of those who fell in the Great War between 1914-1919.
The graves of the soldiers were moved from Fort William, where they were initially buried, several decades ago, said Rakhee Mukherjee, the manager of Bhawanipore War Cemetery.
In every few weeks there are visitors looking for the graves of their grandfathers or great-grandfathers, Ms. Mukherjee said, pointing to two elderly women, Patricia Campbell and Ann Stringer. Both daughters of Caption G.A. Campbell of the Gurkha Rifles, who died on 5th May 1945 during the Second World war, were visiting the grave of their grand father for the first time.
“We are so happy that we are here on Armistice Day,” Ms Campbell said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Shiv Sahay Singh / Kolkata – November 11th, 2018
The war that epitomised the callousness of imperialism
Bengal was not a theatre of war in the 1940s, yet it lost seven times more lives than Britain
Wikimedia Commons
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Bengal famine of 1943, a heart-rending episode in which three million persons died, and which epitomised the callousness of imperialism. The scale of devastation can be understood if we remember that in the United Kingdom, taking civilian and military casualties together, the total loss of life during the entire Second World War was just 0.45 million and in the United States of America 0.42 million. In Germany itself, the loss has been estimated as anywhere between 6.6 and 8.8 million and in the former Soviet Union, which suffered the most, at around 24 million. To say that the populations of these countries were smaller than India’s is beside the point; their comparison should be with the population of Bengal. In 1941, the population of undivided Bengal was only slightly higher, 60 million, compared to 47 million in UK; yet its loss of life was seven times that of the UK in spite of its not being a theatre of war.
The news of the famine was sought to be downplayed at the time, which is hardly surprising since the famine was a direct result of the escalation of British war expenditure on the eastern front. A war demands substantial resources; and the resources for Britain’s war against Japan were largely extracted out of the people of Bengal. Even so, such a massive loss of life could have been avoided if the manner of financing war expenditure had been different, but the same callousness which squeezed the innocent masses of a non-belligerent country for sustaining the war effort of the colonial power also prevented this squeeze from being exercised in a more humane manner than through the deaths of three million people.
If resources are to be raised from the people (let us overlook the absurdity of resources being raised from the colonised people of Bengal for the British war effort), then the obvious way of doing so is through taxation. But while taxation releases goods from those paying taxes, the goods so released may not match the goods required by the military. Moreover, the goods released by taxation may even fall absolutely short of the goods demanded by the expenditure of tax revenue, if tax payments come out of savings (that is,taxation releases no goods at all).
There would still arise therefore, even in the presence of a balanced budget (where a larger tax revenue finances a larger war expenditure), excess demand for certain commodities, and if these commodities happen to be essential goods like foodgrains, then acute food scarcity can arise in spite of the war expenditure being financed by an equivalent amount of taxation. Hence, it is imperative that the government, even while raising taxes to finance war expenditure, must simultaneously institute a regime of rationing of essential goods.
This is what Britain did at home during the war. It raised higher taxes and introduced a regime of universal statutory rationing of essential goods because of which the poor in Britain were reportedly better fed during the war than earlier. But in colonial India this did not happen; rationing, when it was introduced, was confined to urban Bengal, leaving rural areas to the mercy of the market, and resources were raised not through taxation but an altogether different method (Utsa Patnaik, Economic and Political Weekly, October 20).
The British government deposited IOUs drawn in favour of the Reserve Bank of India in London, and against these the RBI printed currency which was spent by Britain within India for its war effort. Since no goods could be imported against these IOUs, this basically meant creating additional demand for the existing amount of goods here, with the newly-printed money that was used for war expenditure. In addition, since British India also joined the war (without any sanction from the Indian people), its government also had to undertake war expenditure and this too was financed by a fiscal deficit, essentially by printing money; this further added to excess demand.
When expenditure is so financed, the goods for it are released as follows. Such excess demand generates inflation, because of which profits increase everywhere. While the working people with fixed money incomes lose, the profit-earners (including traders) everywhere gain correspondingly. But since the latter save more out of their incomes than the former, a good part of the gains they make is saved by them, so that the goods corresponding to such savings now become available to cover the government’s military needs. Hence, while the war expenditure is nominally financed by printed money, the real goods made available for it are obtained through generating such savings.
The inflation so generated is called a “profit inflation” and the additional savings generated through such inflation, which the government uses for its military requirements, are called “forced savings”. Britain’s, and British India’s, war expenditure on the eastern front was financed by a profit inflation generating such forced savings.
Such financing has three peculiar properties which make it utterly repugnant. First, the people who make the real sacrifice of consumption, because they cannot afford to buy goods at the higher prices caused by inflation, are the working people, while the persons who get the credit for such savings (those whose income and wealth increase) are the profit-earners, which is invidious. Second, if the profit-earners save, say, only half their income while habitually consuming the other half, then, for obtaining 100 units of goods for military purposes, the consumption of the working people has to be squeezed by 200, so that as the income of the profit-earners increases by 200 they can hand over 100 for military purposes while consuming an additional 100 themselves. And if they hoard a further 100, the squeeze on working people has to be 300. The squeeze is thus several times the military requirements. Third, the squeeze is imposed precisely upon fixed money income earners, who are the poorest segments of the population.
Financing war expenditure in this way imposed a heavy burden, especially on the poor people of rural Bengal who were net food purchasers (since much of the war expenditure was incurred there). The forced reduction in consumption they had to undergo entailed a drastic reduction in their foodgrain intake, and hence the famine. The poorest among them, with relatively inflexible money incomes and no cash reserves to fall back upon for maintaining real consumption in the face of higher prices, were the most severely affected (Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines).
Ironically, the IOUs deposited in London (the so-called ‘sterling balances’) which were the counterpart of the forced savings imposed upon the hapless famine-stricken people of rural Bengal lost much of their value after the war. A strong official lobby wanted a complete repudiation of that external debt of Britain, arguing that India too had benefited from the British pursuit of the war on the eastern front. But while that opinion mercifully did not prevail, the post-war inflation, boosted by the Korean War boom, reduced the real value of sterling balances, as did the devaluation of the British pound-sterling in 1949 (which reduced their worth vis-à-vis the dollar and commodities with dollar-denominated prices). The death of three million people did not even yield much for posterity.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online Edition / Home> Opinion / by Prabhat Patnaik / November 14th, 2018
KMC gives away Kolkata Shree awards
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Monday announced the name of the Puja committees that have secured the winning position in the Kolkata Shree 2018 that is given out every year to best Pujas by the civic body.
Mayor Sovan Chatterjee on Monday announced the name of Puja committees that have won the Kolkata Shree award 2018. Around 100 Puja committees participated in the competition. The competition was judged by several eminent personalities who have shortlisted the winning Pujas.
A total of 10 categories had been reserved for shortlisting winners which are ‘Serar Sera’, ‘Sera Pujo’, ‘Sera Pratima’, ‘Sera Sailpik Utkorsho’, ‘Sera Bishoy’, ‘Sera Aloksajja’, ‘Sera Paribesh’, ‘Sera Parichana Pujo’, ‘Sera Sambhabana’ and ‘Mayor’s Choice’.
The following Pujas have won in the category of ‘Serar Sera’: Chetla Agrani, 95 Palli, Suruchi Sangha and Tridhara Akalbodhan. In the ‘Sera Pujo’ category the winners are: Naktala Udayan Sangha , Rajdanga Nabauday Sangha, Hindustan Club and Abasar Sarbojanin.
For ‘Sera Pratima’ category: Baghbazar Sarbojanin, Tala Pratay, Kashi Bose Lane and Behala Natun Dal.
The awards for ‘Sera Salpik Utkorsho’ category have been secured by: Shib Mandir Sarbojanin, Selimpur Pally Sarbajanin, 66 Pally and Bosepukur Sitala Mandir; ‘Sera Bishoy’ category: Bhawanipur Sadhin Sangha, 75 Pally Sarbojanin, Bosepukur Talbagan and Samaj Sebi Sangha; ‘Sera Aloksajja’ category: Ekdalia Evergreen, Badamtala Ashar Sangha, Dakshin Kalikata Sarbojanin and Kalighat Milan Samity. A total of 45 Puja committees have won in the category of ‘Mayor’s Choice’.
source: http://www.thestatesman.com / The Statesman / Home> Cities / by Statesman News Service, Kolkata / October 16th, 2018
3 quirky Indian tales from French Reunion Island
The Indian-origin community on this paradise isle is a blend of cultures and eras
Image: Sudha Pillai
Reunion Islands in the Indian Ocean, an overseas department of France and about 9,000 km from Paris, is like a delicious kichdi – a goulash of African, Asian and European cultures. It’s the comfort food that would lift your spirits in an acrimonious world.
Sandwiched between Mauritius and Africa, this paradise isle has mountains, valleys, sandy beaches, pristine blue seas and vertiginous falls. But more than the natural beauty, it is the people of the island that give it its distinctive characteristics.
And people of Indian origin – about 45 per cent of the total population of 837,000 inhabitants – are shining testimonies to this amalgamation.
How they came to be there
The island, formed from a volcanic rising five million years ago, was first discovered by Arab traders. Soon the invaders — Portuguese, British and the French — arrived. Finally, the French colonised it, and christened it Reunion Island in 1793.
An apt name for what the island is today, if not historically accurate.
Reunion Island began as a place where prisoners were left to die. But the prisoners started living idyllic lives – swimming in the sea, climbing mountains, growing rice, vegetables and fruits in the fertile volcanic soil. After all, the island has 300 micro-climates.
The French decided to reclaim this paradise for themselves. First they brought Africans here as slaves for the sugarcane plantations. After slavery was abolished, they fetched indentured workers from India.
And that is how the Indian community started out on this unlikely island.
Mary Theresa Subramaniam
I met Mary Theresa Subramaniam at the Saint-Pierre market, where she’s been working for the past 30 years. Mary’s great-grandfather came to the island with his wife and nine children. But he abandoned them and returned to India. His young wife raised her children in a foreign land.
Clad in a skirt and lavender top, Mary has distinctive South Indian features. She’s never visited India. She believes she may have a “few relatives back in India” but has no clue about their whereabouts. This is also a typical story amongst the Indian community here.
Image: Sudha Pillai
Mary is both a Hindu and a Christian. And there are many like her on the island.
When the Hindu Indians got off the boat two things happened at the immigration office. First, their names were Frenchified. Mary says, “The immigration officers couldn’t get the Indian names right.” Vaidyalingam became Vaitilingam, Arumugam became Aroumougam, and so on.
Second, they were asked to embrace Christianity. Due to the fear of retribution, they embraced it and a few continued to practise Hinduism secretly. Over time, the lines between faiths blurred. When Reunion Islands embraced religious diversity, most Indian families found themselves both Christian and Hindu.
Priest Balaram
A short walk from the market is the Mahakali de Bazaar or the Mahakali temple. Mahakali Utsav and Tamil New Year’s Day are big celebrations on the island.
Tall and lanky Balaram, who can trace his roots back to Pondicherry, is the presiding priest at the Mahakali temple. He is, like most Indians here, fluent in French. “Because that is what we speak at home,” he says. Balaram’s great-grandfather came to Reunion Island. He is one of the few Indians on the island who still has some connection to India. Every year he goes to Munjod, a village in Kanjeepuram, to study Sanskrit.
Image: Sudha Pillai
On the island, Indians from South India, often Hindu, are known as Malbars. Immigrants from North India came later. Muslim Indians from North India are known as Zarabes.
Temples and mosques – the first mosque of France was built here – stand alongside churches. Nowhere is this intermingling of faiths more evident than in the pretty cemeteries. At the St-Pierre Cemetery, amidst decorative family vaults and single graves with cherubs on tombstones, I found numerous graves of Indian-origin Christians. They had a saffron-coloured Trishul-cross combo on the headstones. This was the best religious khichdi I had ever seen.
Image: Sudha Pillai
Jacky Arourmougam
Many elements of India are integrated into the weave of the island. But the influence of Indian cuisine stands out. Jacky Arourmougam, a celebrity chef on the Island, says, “About 80 percent of Creole food is inspired by India.” Rice and lentils are staples along with croissants and baguettes. Samoussas or Samosa is the undisputed national dish.
I enjoyed an outdoor picnic at Trou d’eau at La Saline Les Bains with Jacky. His forefathers hail from Bengal and South India. Some of his unique dishes are inspired by the secret recipes of his mother and grandmother who came from Bengal. When the French-sounding ‘achhard’ is placed on the table, you realise it is but the spicy Indian achaar and that kurkuma is turmeric which is used extensively in the island cuisine. And chicken cari draws heavily from the Indian curry. No doubt, the mingling of communities has given Reunion Island its unique food culture.
Image: Sudha Pillai
For most Indians in Reunion Island, their acquaintance with India has been through faded stories of their ancestors travelling through the family vine or the banyan and mango trees in the backyard, the seeds of which were brought to the island by their forefathers or the recipes that are carefully passed down from great-great-grandmothers. While few Indian-islanders desire to travel to India, most of them are indifferent to the distant association. Reunion Island is where they feel rooted. It’s not that they shun their past. It is just that they prefer to live in the present.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Online edition / Home> Travel / by Sudha Pillai / November 13th, 2018
14
Graphic novels give a push to Bengal’s dying folk arts
In a unique initiative, three graphic novels have been published on three different art forms of the State, both in Bengali and English in 2018.
Pintu, a teenager from Murshidabad is surprised to hear it from Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore that he wanted to introduce Raibenshe, a genre of folk martial dance, at Santinketan, while Tito, a boy from Kolkata is amazed that behind the Chhau masks, there are real people dancing.
These are excerpts from graphic novels published by the West Bengal government, the UNESCO and Banglanatk.com for promotion of traditional crafts of West Bengal. In a unique initiative, three such graphic novels have been published on three different art forms of the State, both in Bengali and English in 2018.
The graphic story on the Purulia’s famous Chhau dance is called Experiencing Chhau (Dekhe Elam Chhau) while the book on Raibenshe, folk martial dance form south Bengal is called Raibenshe Rocks ( Ajo Aache Raibenshe). The third publication is on the little known puppetry from Nadia titled The tale of a lost leg ( Harano Payer Kissa).
“These graphic novels are part of our efforts to promote cultural industries in different parts of the State under the project Rural Crafts & Cultural Hubs, which is supported by Department of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises and UNESCO,” said Ananya Bhattacharya, director of Banglanatak.com, a social enterprise working with artisans across different States of the country.
Ms. Bhattacharya said that the idea behind the publication is to engage young minds so that they become aware about folk tradition of the State.
“These graphic stories or short novels, whatever you call them, are not more than 50 pages and are designed with lots of colourful sketches to engage young readers. While the characters are fictional, it has been our effort to pack as much information about the folk art forms as possible in these stories,” Ranjan Sen, author of these publications said.
These stories also provide a glimpse of efforts taken up to revive these dying folk art form. Mr Sen said, adding that such initiative to encourage awareness about folk art has not been taken anywhere in the country.
These graphic novels are being distributed to children through school outreach programmes and at different fairs and festival.
There are plans to publish more of such graphic novels and one publication on Baul singers of the State is in the offing. Mr. Bhattacharya said that under the Rural Crafts & Cultural Hub initiative, work is going on 15 different crafts of the State and similar publications engaging young minds will be brought on most of these art forms.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books / by Shiv Sahay Singh / Kolkata – November 12th, 2018