Hazar Chourasi ki Ma and Kanu Sanyal - Tributes to Idealism

Tehelka magazine recently published an interview with Kanu Sanyal, the last surviving patriarch of the original Naxalite movement. Today when Naxalism is often used and understood interchangeably with insurgency and plain old terrorism, it is almost romantic to recall the days of the original Naxalbari movement and its ideals. There were three key leaders who had broken away from the communist party of India (Marxist) after being disillusioned. The CPI (M) was formed after many of the members felt that the undivided CPI was no longer a party of revolution but had become a fellow traveler of the congress and had decided to tread the path of parliamentary democracy.

Soon however the CPI (M) was found to be following the same path and many of the revolutionaries were disillusioned. Among the three prominent ones, who came out were Kanu Sanyal, Charu Mazumdar and Jungal Santhal. As was the case then and as is the case now, the three did not agree on every thing but they were agreed on the need and necessity to have a revolution which alone they felt could bring about social change. And so began the story of Naxalbari and the failed revolution which petered out due to the brutal repression carried out by the Siddhartha Shankar Ray led last congress government in west Bengal.

In the post emergency elections of 1977, the Left Front with its non revolutionary but socialist leaning policies came into power , absorbed the cadres who were not already killed or disillusioned and it has been the same story in every election in West Bengal ever since. Of the leaders, Charu Mazumdar and Jungal Santhal are dead but Kanu Sanyal is still the leader of one of the CPI (ML) factions and lives in Naxalbari. He is in the twilight of his life, his health is failing, he has seen more setbacks than victories in his hardship filled life but there is still hope sparkling in his eyes. His idealism has been trampled but not crushed and amazingly not extinguished.

For those who missed out on that generation, Govind Nihalani's Hazar Chourasi ki Ma" captures the images of that generation very well- spirits that will be defeated but never destroyed, even in death, an insensitive state conscious of the letter of the law but not its spirit, bewildered parents who try hard to understand the passion that drives their children and often fail, the shallowness of the lives of many young people , even as another set of their own peers march to the beat of a different drum that seemingly only they can hear.

I would never be able to agree with the methods that the Naxalites used then or now what ever be the ideological justification they present. But I can never cease to admire the likes of Kanu Sanyal and the many unknowns that films like Hazar Chaurasi ki Ma and Hazaron Khwaishen Aise depict - people who received nothing at all in this life - not wealth, not honor, not power, not any one of the creature comforts that people often chase all their lives and still in their old age with nothing at all of their ideological aspirations visible on the horizon are still able to hope for things that are very visibly unseen.