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| 'We are an audacious nation, and should be proud we are so' | | Excerpts from an address by WB Governor |
| Gopalkrishna Gandhi / New Delhi Sep 20, 2009, 00:06 IST |
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Our country is altogether unique in the way it copes with its despondency, its disappointments, its crises. I do not know of any other country which can alternate between crisis and catastrophe as ours does — and overcomes the challenge.
How many countries in the world are plagued as ours is by terrorism? How many countries face up to natural disasters like ours, in several parts? Where else can we find an example of one billion and more people, of varying backgrounds, coming together within the bonds of democracy, in the mahasagar that Rabindranath sang about? Where else can we find the tremendous advances made by a nation in a system that is not just in form democratic but vibrantly so?
To universal suffrage we have added the incredible achievement of the electronic voting machine, to which we have further added the even more amazing phenomenon of the EPIC. Which country could have thought of and then gone on to implement so bold an embodying of the democratic spirit? And which country can not just think of but work towards that extraordinary goal — a unified identification number for each of its citizens? We are an audacious nation and we should be proud that we are so.
Our samay may know and indeed does know several hells; but it has heavenly vistas of achievement and triumphs as well. Whenever a girl-child is married off, I ask: "Are we in the Middle Ages?" Whenever I see a girl doing brilliantly in an exam, I say: "She is our future."
Rammohun Roy turned the chemistry of his samay by leading, successfully, the movement against the burning of widows. Our samay does not burn widows. But it has seen brides being burnt. And yet, there is a difference.
Whenever such an abomination occurs, the nation and its legislatures are enraged and the guilty are brought to book. And so, dear chhatro-chhatrira, choose for yourselves, beyond your employment an area of work in which you can alter for the better, the chemistry of our samay. Choose your roles in our samay.
Choose between being part of the dark half of the samay or the bright half. Choose between being part of the continuing Middle Ages in our samay or the continuing Renaissance. That requires that you say "yes" with pride when you see in our society something good happening, that you in fact become part of that good. Equally, that requires you to reject emphatically that in our society which is not.
While on the subject of emphatic rejection, I am reminded that Mrinalda in his films uses a word, just one sound, that belongs to no language and to all Indian languages. It is not to be found in any dictionary, except perhaps in a 'Oxford Dictionary of Exclamations'. And that word is Chhi.
When in Mrinalda's famous film Neel Akasher Neeche the barrister husband played by Bikas Roy comes home and sees a Chinaman sitting there, he does not like it and peremptorily asks the visitor to leave. The wife, played by Manju De, who had asked the Chinaman to come in, does not contest the husband's right to do so. But she also says just that one word, looking at her husband: "Chhi".
Chhi is used in Akaler Sondhane also. When the father of a girl says to the would-be Director in the story: "No, she will not act in this film, she will not play the role you have in your mind", Dhritiman looks at the narrow-minded man and says just that: "Chhi". That small sound has been invested by Mrinal-da with a profundity as only he can give it.
There are many things in human relationships and in Indian society that require rejection, among which human aggressiveness takes a prominent place. No book will tell you when and to what form of aggression you should say: "That is wrong, that is unethical; I will have nothing to do with it." No book tells you that.
But an inner monitor exists in all of us that can tell us, intuitively, what in society is bhalo and what is mondo, what to say no to and when.
(Excerpts from the address of Gopalkrishna Gandhi, governor of West Bengal, at the convocation of the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, on September 11)
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