The (De) Void Between Us

Volume 1, July,2016

An Introduction to this Volume:

The present volume explores the notions of different spaces and places, from the eyes of insider-outsider, having connections with the place and yet amused as a curious traveler adamant upon exploring the myriad layers of a specific place.Manila, Habana and Nagaland are worlds apart not only in distance and cognition yet the authors in this present volume seem to be questioning the formations of place and their fluid transcedental nature in being one in many and many in one space/s. As a conclusion as well as contribution by our In-Space columnist, Rajib tries to explore the question of Permanent Address, distributed across absolute and psychological space and yet in search of a amalgamation of both.


This volume contains:

Manila: A Brief Sentimental History by Charlie Samuya Veric 
The post tries to mediate memories, spaces and feelings between two worlds, two spaces by a person trying to question and rediscover the ways of belonging in what was/is old and new. In performing belongingness, feelings of one place are frequently being juxtaposed upon the facade and experience of the (re)newed old.

La Habana by Tapo Banerjee
Habana has a very stereotypical representation in media especially in photographs. The present photo essay is an attempt to portray the myriad facades of Habana, the diversity in composition in terms of people, places and their objects of being.

Looking Nagaland from Ting Ya & Monai Ting Naga Villages by Juri Baruah

Most often, the interest lies not in boundaries or relations across it but in the spaces which are created by practices, beliefs and institutions.  The imagination of Nagaland as a different state and the political conflict in the border areas always remains debatable. While questioning the ways in which the insider outsider perspective relatively draws the b/order, it is necessitated to examine the reactions and the discourse of state and its fragmented spaces observed through heterogeneous spaces of the two Naga villages namely; Ting Ya and Moina Ting located in Sivasagar district.

Silver Side of the Mirror by Rajib Nandi: In Space Column

The latest contribution titled Permanent Address discusses and questions about the notions of home, place making and what and how a permanent address, a rootedness in space can be defined along with questioning its connection with one's identity; both formal and informal.

The Anti Social Media

Modak [LADDOO], a mouth watering dish of Maharashtra

The History of Tea

CASTE AND THE FIGURE OF THE TEACHER

BY 

ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY

CULTURES OF CASTE

PART 3

I have been arguing that caste in Bengal is found in unusual sites. In this post, I will begin with such a site and then recall a story. Both in some way; hark back to the 1940s and 50s. The first is about the use of some words and terms. I choose a particular word: Acharya, or respected teacher or a minister in the original sense of the term, as distinct from its common sense connotation of a political operator holding an executive position within a ruling dispensation. In the original sense, a minister is one who administers, or presides over a ceremony. In this sense then, Acharya is also a term close to Purohit or priest. Be that as it may, we see that the term Acharya, or Minsiter, originally refers to a priest who administers (usually worshipful) ceremonies. Whichever way you use it, the term Acharya cannot escape a (dignified, formal) sense of an individual presiding over an institution conferring some merit on those in association with it. For instance, in India the Chancellor of a University or institution of higher learning is called an Acharya, and the Vice Chancellor an Upacharya.  

The Politics of Acharyahood

In Bengal, the word would be in use to refer to great teachers, scholars and learned men. Yet it would not be in use to refer to all great teachers, scholars or learned men, without discrimination. At the moment, I am referring not so much to formal titles but popular points of reference. For instance, nobody formally conferred the title Acharya to scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose. But in common parlance, he is always referred to as Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and Bose Institute is referred to as Basu Bigyan Mandir (or The Bose Temple of Science). The honorific became so powerfully associated with him that it has become a second nature of Bengalis to refer to him as Acharya. The history of the first time he was so referred has happily erased itself from public memory. It is hard today, though not impossible, to trace the precise moment when Sir J.C. Bose (as known to the world) became Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose to the Bengalis. Now I have no issues with Jagadish Chandra Bose. With Acharya though, I do, and I will come to that soon.

Yet another great Bengali scientist P.C. Ray would be popularly referred to as Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray. In his case, his austere lifestyle, or clothing, or generosity might have inspired the title; apart from his excellence and originality as a scientist and teacher. But here too, one is not sure about exactly when and how the honorific of Acharya was first attached to his name. Ditto for another sagely Bengali scientist cum teacher Satyendra Nath Bose. All of them were and are popularly referred to as Acharya, even when they did not head Universities, or minister religious ceremonies. It could be said that their excellence as knowledge seekers and dispensers culminated to earn them this honorific in the Bengali spaces of popular or public, iconography or mythology; well and good.

Who can be an Acharya?  

But are all Bengali scientists of such stature, excellence, temperament and renown accorded the honorific Acharya by the popular Bengali mythology? Sadly, no. I refer particularly to Meghnad Saha, who was arguably no less talented or renowned or as successful as the three I named above. Has anyone heard Meghnad Saha referred to as an Acharya by the Bengalis? I wonder why. Surely, he should have been. If Bengalis with global renown, learning and respect had an entitlement to the title Acharya, which had presumably been secularized, Meghnad Saha had as much of an entitlement to it as Satyen Bose, who was a batchmate of Saha, as a matter of fact. Both were students of J.C. Bose and P.C. Ray, both were outstanding students of Presidency College and both had earned global renown as alpha physicists. Every student of physics in Bengal and India, if not the world, would have heard of Bose and Saha. In public profile, Saha was no less remarkable than Bose in any sense.

The Crucial Omission

It would be a mistake to assume Bengalis, or Indians, do not recognize or respect Saha. Both Saha and Bose have major research institutions named after them. One of the most elite and beautiful roads in Kolkata is named after Meghnad Saha. He has an assured space in the Bengali mythology. For all practical purposes, he was recognized as a shining star, and an equal of Bose in merit, so far as doing science was concerned. Yet, the title of Acharya would elude him. At best, he would be respectfully addressed as Dr. Saha, but never as Acharya Meghnad Saha. I do not know why. Is it because he came from a non Bhadralok caste background? Who knows?

Unusual Sites

Caste, as I have been suggesting, are found in Bengal in such unusual sites. Let me recall yet another old story. It would look and sound familiar today, but in its time it was something of a precedent. As you know, these days writers are often publicly heckled, beaten and even murdered. You also notice; most often that some group of people find their portrayal in a film objectionable and raise a furore. But in Bengal, especially in early twentieth century, writers would enjoy a near divine status. There would be literary soirees organized by local youth associations, and hearing writers speak about their work and about kings and cabbages was a common enough form of popular middle class entertainment. Just as actors and singers entertain crowds today, writers would entertain crowds with their discourses. It would be something akin to Lit-Fests of today, but something far less ostentatious and ceremonious, and far more open and invested with far greater popular participation. In other words, in early twentieth century Bengal, writers were itinerant teachers of the public in Bengal. They would be held in the highest esteem. Movies enjoyed a secondary status to novels. Bengalis those days would believe that a movie is best made as a faithful translation of a novel. Indeed, a cinema would often be referred as a Boi or book and the highest possible praise for a novel translated into a movie would be that it had been a faithful representation.

Assault on an Author

In such a world, the unimaginable happened on April 10, 1949. A major contemporary Bengali writer was actually heckled and beaten. Writer Tarashankar Banerjee had earlier published a novel called Sandipan Pathshala in 1945. In April 1949, an eponymous film based on the novel had been released. It was a story about a poor Sadgop  ( A middle ranking agricultural caste) teacher taking to education as a first generation learner and later setting up a primary school in which he offered lessons to first generation learners from Kaibarta (fishermen) and Shundi (Toddy tapper) castes. Incidentally, Meghnad Saha too hailed from the latter caste, although he came from East Bengal. The events in the novel were based in Tarashankar Banerjee’s native Birbhum district. There the Kaibartas were indeed poor and petty traders involved in fishing and other small jobs.

Mahisyas

But in Howrah and Midnapore districts, the majority of the agriculturist section of the Kaibartas; had over the last half century or so made great strides in education and employment. Indeed, a great many of them had become middle class professionals. Besides, at Howrah many of them had become small scale entrepreneurs. The most successful entrepreneur among them at the time was one of the largest industrialists in Bengal in the 1940s. Some of them took great offence at their portrayal in the movie.

A Novel turned Movie

Let us now return to the story. In the novel, indignant members from the local Brahman zamindar family cause all kinds of trouble to the initiative of the poor teacher. Yet, the main branch of the zamindar family support, indeed welcome his labours. The elder son of the zamindar family, also a nationalist, lauds his work and his mother appoints him as tutor for her younger sons. Gradually, obstacles are removed and the humble teacher spends a life time teaching young students from humble backgrounds. He does not make any money but earn respect from the locals, and some of his students later turn into successful professionals in their own right. The novel was basically a tribute to this humble teacher.

Sociologizing Mahisyas

Yet, the novel did indeed sociologize Kaibartas and Sunris. Kaibartas were portrayed as characteristically unwilling to be educated, and taking to petty trade, as opposed to the upper castes which ‘naturally’ send their children to school and aspire for a gentlemanly life. Even if the portrayal of Kaibartas of Birbhum may be historically defensible, Mahisyas of Howrah and Midnapore had every right to feel offended. They were still popularly referred to as Kaibartas, and their social mobility was only 40 or so years old; since it had formally begun only in 1901. But they had since made great strides. By 1949, they were staunchly nationalist; the largest number of members of the ruling Congress party came from the districts in which they had been a majority. The engineering industry in Howrah had earlier been a monopoly of upper castes; but since 1920s Mahisyas had gradually upstaged the upper castes and occupied the lion’s share among the Howrah engineering industry entrepreneurs.

Endorsement by the Bhadralok Literati

Meanwhile, the movie had been hailed as a great triumph of art and as a faithful translation of the novel by the Bradralok literati in Calcutta. They discovered in the novel and the movie a great message, of education being a great liberating influence. The major functionaries of the government and a large number of Bengali litterateurs issued public endorsement in favour of the movie. The government immediately granted a tax waiver. Indeed, the circulation of the movie was now officially endorsed as a lesson, to be imparted to the entire population of Bengal. At the same time, Mahisyas lodged a protest campaign against the movie and the author. They suddenly appeared to find their hard earned respectability and rise to urban prominence reduced to insignificance.

The Assault and its Aftermath

Amid such tension, Tarashankar Banerjee had gone to a literary conference in Howrah, right at the heart of Mahisya dominance. On his way back from the literary soiree, he was waylaid by a Mahisya mob and physically assaulted. The incident was immediately condemned from all quarters, including the Mahisya caste association, which issued a statement dissociating themselves from the incident. The Congress party, concerned that its base among the Mahisyas may be eroded, arranged for a reconciliation meeting and the author gracefully agreed to withdraw the allegedly offensive portions from the novel. Radicals regretted his position as a defeat of the writers as a whole. I have written a longer piece on the incident, in which I see the incident as a confrontation between two ‘nationalist’ images: one that of a dedicated humble school teacher from lower caste background, almost a lower caste Brahman, as endorsed by the Bhadralok literati and the other as the hardworking and prosperous, but not too literate, Mahisya entrepreneurs.

There is no need to elaborate on the incident or its various dimensions. The point is that in Bengal even the ‘liberating’ images of the lower caste was in effect determined and controlled by the Bhadralaok literati. While the ‘criminal’ aspect of the assault was universally condemned, the politics of nationalist imagery in circulation often goes unnoticed.  

Author's Bio- Note:

Anirban Bandyopadhyay researches social and cultural history of modern Bengal and India, with particular reference to caste questions in the public domain. He has a PhD in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and is working on his first monograph. Bandyopadhyay has published on caste in edited volumes, EPW and South Asian History and Culture. He also publishes general interest columns on caste, cinema, sports, books and politics in Deccan Herald, DNA, Economic Times, Open Magazine, The Telegraph, Anandabazar Patrika and Ei Samay. A bilingual academic cum public intellectual, he currently works as a Junior Research Officer at the Educational Multimedia Research Centre, Kolkata.

CULTURAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF MEDIA

WHERE TO LOOK FOR CASTE IN BENGAL, AND WHY???

BY 

ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY

CULTURES OF CASTE

PART 2

Caste in Bengal is not present, where it is elsewhere and this is precisely; why it is elsewhere in Bengal. In other words, caste in Bengal is manifested in sites where the common sense searches do not expect it. Let me clarify, that by caste I refer to prejudiced or preconceived hierarchies as though they were natural. In this post, I present two contemporary stories. Both of them came to my attention on 13 December, 2015. This post then, is about some of the ways in which caste is present in Bengal in the everyday perceptions and prejudices of the urban middle classes.

The Errant Politician

The two stories emerge from reports from the largest circulated Bengali newspaper published from Kolkata. They happened to me in the sense that I read them, like lakhs of other Bengalis. But something about the content of the report made me read it against the grain. Here, I describe how I read it and about the unanticipated directions to which that reading directed me. 

The first was a long report on a major local politician in Malda district who had refused to release an ambulance to its target recipients, in this case a Dalit Caste Association. The ambulance had been purchased presumably; out of the local area development fund of the politician. He is something of a royalty there. Years ago, his elder brother practically ruled the place as a major Congress leader, and dispensed benevolence and retribution freely and generously. People there; would treat him with reverence, in shock and awe; considering him to be an absolute monarch or a divine entity. Other members of the family have since laid claim to that legacy, in substantial measure and with a degree of success. Even today, the family can make or break political and material fortunes in that district. 

The Missing Association

There has been research on ‘voluntary’ caste associations by historians and political scientists. But the focus generally remained confined to the extent to which these associations manage to consolidate caste groups into homogenous voting blocks. Since caste associations in Bengal cannot do that in Bengal, research on caste associations in Bengal has never quite taken off. But they continue to exist, largely as non-governmental organizations, distributing relief or serving the needs of fellow caste-men within the limited resources in its command. As such, these are social organizations composed only of fellows from a particular caste. They may or may not be politically active or useful, but only detailed research can bring out exactly what role they get to play in organized electoral politics. This particular caste association in Bengal survives as a social service organization and local interest group.

Hierarchy as a Force

The ambulance was to be ceremoniously handed over to the Dalit Caste Association by the Leader. As such, the organization had put together a ceremony,accordingly. Meanwhile, something about them; caused the leader some displeasure and he refused to attend the ceremony. He then, called the leaders to another ceremony he would be attending. They rushed. There, the leader formally handed over the key to the ambulance. Yet, the very next day he sent a man and asked for the key. The unsuspecting, or simply puzzled recipients did as asked. Since then, the ambulance had been idling away in the custody of this political leader. He has not even formally denied the charge. The newspaper published the report as an instance of the unjust and arbitrary conduct of the leader, that is, he had been impeding public good and so on.

Forging Association

But the report also mentions that the members of that Dalit caste association are not too happy and that they were planning formal complaints to various governmental authorities, such as the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police. Besides, they had already got in touch with the media, or else I would not be reading the story sitting in Kolkata. They also spoke about planning to mobilize their entire community against this perceived injustice. The community, they claimed, numbered almost a million.

New Possibilities…

So here we have a caste association actually claiming some control over a constituency of some million citizens. Whether they actually succeed in their plan is for future to tell. But the very fact, that there is still a Dalit caste association in West Bengal; which is actually planning to mobilize a million strong members is news enough. After all, researchers on caste in West Bengal have not yet found any major caste collective, other than the Matuas, which command that large a following. Again, only detailed focus research can work out if indeed; they actually command that large a following in reality. I am happy enough to note; that there are influential caste collectives other than Matuas in Bengal. The point I am making; is simply; that by presuming that caste associations in Bengal are not political or electorally insignificant, we end up obviating possibilities of actually exploring what exactly it is that they do, or are. Now, they can well be less electorally influential than caste associations, say, in Bihar, but has there been any research to that effect, apart from the little that has been done on the Matua Mahasangha? To a non-Malda resident, and most certainly to a non-Bengali scholar, it would appear that such caste associations simply do not exist. 

The first point, therefore, is that researchers on caste in Bengal now have a potentially large Dalit caste association to work on, in terms of what it had been, is or can possibly be.

Genealogies Galore

The second report is about a genealogy of some sort. One enthusiast had been collecting details about the forefathers of President Pranab Mukherjee, going back to nearly thousand years which he has formally presented as a richly bound tome to the President himself. The latter reportedly had earlier encouraged him. The document reportedly is an encyclopedia on all Mukherjees of Bengal, or of the gotra (clan/lineage) to which all Mukherjees of Bengal are reportedly bound by blood. In itself, it is a perfectly harmless exercise, for it entails no rape or murder in the name of caste. Yet, it points to the keen desire among sections of Bengali Brahmans to believe, and try to ‘scientifically’ establish, that all of them sprang from a single ‘original’ forefather, who had at some point of time in the past; migrated to Bengal from somewhere in North India. But can a Dalit caste in Bengal put together a comparable genealogy purportedly running into a thousand years, or make a list of secular successes within its own clan? Do the amateur researchers even realize that without their intentions, they are in the process; interiorizing others? Does the President really need a thousand year old genealogy to prove that his forefathers were great men? Aren’t his own current achievements great enough? In any case, it is hard to believe that every one of us had great forefathers for the last thousand years. Does the genealogy also include the rotten apples within the clan? It is a historical fact, that until the 1940s, urban Bhadraloks, and those in district towns, had this tendency to have their genealogies written, in order to publicly ascertain their glorious past. In some ways, these were Indian imitations of the Peerage list. Everyone wanted to be a grandee, with an illustrious set of pasts and predecessors. Given the current President’s age, and his legendary memory, he will possibly remember Gyanendra Nath Kumar’s Vamsha Parichaoy volumes. The point I am making is simply that the Bengali Bhadralok had once; deep anxieties about their very recent elevation to respectability, vis a vis the Europeans, especially in matters of peerage.

Research Possibilities…

There was nothing new or unique in this. New arrivals to money and respectability in every society look toward projecting a glorious inheritance. So, there developed a whole genre among amateur Bengali ‘researchers’ which dedicated itself to writing ‘genealogies’ or clan histories, as it were, of successful men and families in and around Kolkata. With time, that genre has faded away from the public memory. The researchers on caste in Bengal have explored this genre very rarely and when they did, such as Kumkum Chatterjee’s excellent articles on genealogies as historical material, the attention has either been on how they open up the very definition of history in early twentieth century Bengal, or on how they offer excellent material for a social history of medieval Bengal. They are both eminently valid concerns, yet it is possible to look at this genre also as a way in which the Bhadralok had been building a self identity, in alliance with the new discipline and discourse of ‘history’, and in contradistinction to the Europeans outside and to the ‘low’ castes within its own social world. The self making of the Bhadralok again is a familiar territory for researchers, but not pertaining to this genre of literature. 

The second point I make therefore, is that there is a need to research how distinguished Bhadralok families in early twentieth century Bengal had their genealogies made, as a mark of, well, distinction, and how this strategy possibly came to generate a sense of inadequacy among those who could not boast of such pedigree or had no means to arrange for their genealogies to be written up.  

Author's Bio- Note:

Anirban Bandyopadhyay researches social and cultural history of modern Bengal and India, with particular reference to caste questions in the public domain. He has a PhD in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and is working on his first monograph. Bandyopadhyay has published on caste in edited volumes, EPW and South Asian History and Culture. He also publishes general interest columns on caste, cinema, sports, books and politics in Deccan Herald, DNA, Economic Times, Open Magazine, The Telegraph, Anandabazar Patrika and Ei Samay. A bilingual academic cum public intellectual, he currently works as a Junior Research Officer at the Educational Multimedia Research Centre, Kolkata.

CASTE AND THE BENGALI BHADRALOK

BY 

ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY

CULTURES OF CASTE

PART 1

Caste in Bengal is a paradox. Too many examples of public display of untouchability, forced physical exclusion or humiliation, are hard to find. Yet, as one scholar has written not so long ago, leadership positions on almost all significant spheres of the Bengali life are enjoyed predominantly by upper castes. Moreover, in case of arranged marriages; not just caste but lineage and clan too, often enough come into consideration. Ironically enough, voices against caste discrimination and research on history and politics of caste in Bengal, are still a distinctly Bhadralok preserve. How to explain the paradox that there is neither immobilizing untouchability nor adequate representation of Dalits or other marginalized castes in positions of power and authority in Bengal?

Within and Beyond: The Common Sense Definition

The point has partly to do with the generally accepted definition of caste discrimination as publicly display of untouchability, exclusion, humiliation or violence against Dalits or other ‘backward’ castes. 

It is hard, if not impossible, to adequately map the caste question in Bengal, with this definition. However, it is not as if untouchability does not in any form manifest itself in Bengal. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, for instance, has recently written of how Dalit children would be denied food from the Mid Day meal programmes in a primary school in a West Bengal district bordering Bihar and Jharkhand. That, he rightly argues, is an obvious display of untouchability in the public domain, only waiting to be acknowledged. It is possible to actually quantify such instances through social science research, and such research must commence at once. In absence of large, generalizable data, denial, or late, or unfair delivery of a public resource to sections of the target population, however, can be, and is, attributed to malfunctioning of the service delivery machinery. It could be argued, in other words, that the teacher or other staff members concerned were inefficient. They did not know how to carry out their job, and that other teachers at other schools might not actually make such errors. That argument is probably not valid, or true, but it can plausibly be made, because enough data is simply not available. One cannot yet plausibly argue, I mean, that that Anganwadi school that Bandyopadhyay referred to was a typical example. It probably is, or is not, but we do not know beyond reasonable doubt. Having said that, it could still be argued that untouchability, even in the unusual form of denial of food to Dalit children in government sponsored schools, happens not in large towns, but in villages. It would mean that residual traces of untouchability persist in Bengal, in remote pockets, away from the glare of the media and middle classes. The point is that untouchability in various guises does stalk the everyday reality in West Bengal, but social science research is yet to pay adequate attention.

Social science research can think about how to generate adequate data on caste based discrimination, and recent works by Thorat et al. on discrimination against Dalits in the job market, particularly during interview, offers an excellent model for such research. In case of Bengal, caste, and not untouchability in the north or south Indian sense, is a more useful analytical category. 

A most obvious site where caste is highly visible is the marriage market. This is true particularly of arranged marriages amongst Bengalis. Take a look at matrimonial advertisements in newspapers published from Kolkata, for instance. The caste of both prospective brides and grooms is clearly mentioned, and that of the desired match often enough indicated. In case of love marriages, parents are less worried about brides or grooms from among the matching castes. While they are unlikely to be at war if their children marry out of caste, they do not feel ecstatic about it, and occasionally wait for things to go wrong, so that they can attribute the trouble to incompatible caste equations. But how does one account for negligible presence of Dalit and backward communities in positions of power and authority in urban spaces?

Questioning Protests

Bengalis would almost certainly protest against my opinion, as is their wont, generally speaking. It is time, therefore to move to the realm of protests. Bengalis protest against all kinds of injustice anywhere in the world. But they are not equal opportunity protesters. They somehow fail to organize high pitched mass protests against atrocities against Dalits elsewhere in India. This is important, for Bengalis come down to the street and write pamphlets or political tracts, posters and slogans for all kinds of causes. They protest against police aggressiveness against students, against oppression, against marginalized sexualities and even against holding up dearness allowance for militarian public servants. 

On a more serious note, there is not a good cause in the world that cannot have the Bengalis mount a protest procession or wide discussion, except "one". Bengali newspapers rarely publish pieces against atrocities against Dalits elsewhere; somehow even young Bengali students do not find the cause powerful enough to drag them down to the street. Let us ask a straight question. Why do Bengalis not become irresistibly outraged when Dalit children are raped and strung up in public elsewhere in India? It simply would not do to mutter that caste does not exist here, or superstition has died away. The middle class Bengali is fiercely superstitious and irrational. Look at the number of astrological gemstones in the forearms of adolescent and marriageable Bengali women. It is not as if Bengali men do not wear them or women drop them after a happy marriage. All I am suggesting is that middle class parents often enough tend to believe, irrationally or miraculously that some gemstone can find them an excellent son/daughter in law. So Bengalis do believe in superstitions, whether they admit it or not. In other words, the ‘traditional’ has not altogether disappeared from the Bengali everyday.

Historicizing ‘Bengali’ Culture and Civilization

Let us turn now to history. History can be ruthless, so be prepared. Bengalis launched an apoplectic protest in 1932 when the colonial state threatened to assign a large number of seats to Depressed Classes, along with Muslims. The protest campaign rallied all sections of the upper caste Bengali Hindu together, and they raised alarm that ‘the Bengali culture and civilization’ was under a mortal threat which must be resisted to death. I do not want to name the leaders of the protest, or participants, for they constituted the entire who’s who of the Bengali bhadralok. If you do not believe me, look up the National Library collections. I will be too happy to give you the reference to the relevant documents. But the point I am making here is that by the 1930s the Bhadralok had successfully translated their overwhelming dominance in Bengal as ‘the Bengali culture and civilization’. If the Bhadralok were to lose leadership positions, such as seats in the legislature, they argued, Bengal would lose its culture and civilization. It is as if, but for seats in the legislature, the Bhadralok could not continue to produce excellence in Bengali ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’. It is not my argument; all of this is much more starkly written and published in the document I refer to. This is not the space to offer a summary of that document. Those who live abroad can also look up the Zetland collection in the British Library. Once again, I will be too happy to offer the references. So, there was, and I think still is, an equation between leadership positions in politics, culture and professions and the so called Bhadralok pride in the excellence of Bengali culture and civilization. Threaten the Bhadralok with a loss of those secular spaces of power and authority and they respond with a rhetoric of a motivated assault on their culture and civilization. Strange, isn’t it, how culture and civilization is seen to live in legislature, and no one really minds? 

Yet more questions...

It is easy to cite similar instance from subsequent times. But that is not the point. The point is why you probably did not know anything at all about the 1932 mass protest by the Bhadralok. Why, for instance, history books in Bengal portray 1932 events only as ‘communal award’ in a way that it mattered only to Muslims and was an unqualified disaster for the rest? Why is that mass outrage of the Bhadralok not spoken of as an important landmark in the history of Bengal? Why don’t we ask ourselves what exactly it means to be Bhadralok? Who do we refer to as Bhadralok? We say that it is about good manners, but do we refer to a well behaved rag picker, or coolie, or taxi driver, as a Bhadralok? It is time to ask some difficult questions of the Bengali Hindu upper castes. The questions have to address what they do not talk about. Caste, I beg to submit, is "greatest Bengali unsayable". It is there, and lived, but not in quite the manner and form in which it is lived elsewhere in India. Only talking about it in public can clarify matters. The Bengali needs to ask themselves some hard questions.  

Author's Bio- Note:

Anirban Bandyopadhyay researches social and cultural history of modern Bengal and India, with particular reference to caste questions in the public domain. He has a PhD in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and is working on his first monograph. Bandyopadhyay has published on caste in edited volumes, EPW and South Asian History and Culture. He also publishes general interest columns on caste, cinema, sports, books and politics in Deccan Herald, DNA, Economic Times, Open Magazine, The Telegraph, Anandabazar Patrika and Ei Samay. A bilingual academic cum public intellectual, he currently works as a Junior Research Officer at the Educational Multimedia Research Centre, Kolkata.

DESIGNED LANDSCAPES AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: DEBATES AND IDEAS

BY 

SENJUTI MANNA

As I was preparing to pen down this blog, I received the shocking news of Professor Mohammad Shaheer’s sudden demise. He was one of the finest landscape architects of contemporary India - a designer par excellence; but at the same time he was also a philosopher, an author and most importantly, a teacher of multiple generations of landscape architects. He was the Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture in School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi during my post-graduation studies there and I was fortunate enough to be taught by him. The news of his death flooded me with memories of my interactions with him and I was reminded of his unfaltering confidence on the role of landscape profession in shaping the practices of spatial planning and developments in modern India. I began to wonder if he was right in his assessment about the power of landscape in shaping the modern perception of nature and culture, especially, in the rapidly transforming socio-cultural context of 21^st Century India. I think he was correct in believing that landscape architecture has an important role to play in the sustainable transformation of Indian societies into a nation which respects its nature and culture.

Photo 1: Professor Mohammad Shaheer, photo courtesy: LA! Indian Journal of Landscape Architecture

Landscape Architecture: Shaping the Outdoor Spaces

Before I discuss the role of landscape in contemporary Indian societal developments, it is necessary to have a quick review of what the term landscape means. In common-sense understanding, landscape means a natural scenario- either in the form of paintings or in real-life settings. As most of the landscape historians observe, the concept of landscape emerged in 17^th century as part of painting tradition, especially, that of the Dutch, which referred to paintings depicting inland sceneries. The focus of these landscapes was to produce images of ideal or idealised places of natural beauty.

The 18^th century landscape gardeners took inspiration from these paintings and recreated these idealised spaces of pure natural beauty by carefully manipulating natural elements such as earth, stone, water and vegetation. However from the beginning of 20^th century, the meaning of landscape took a geographical turn when the term began to mean a tract of land with its distinguishing characteristics and features, especially, as a product of modifying or shaping processes and agents (usually natural).

Landscape architecture means the organization of natural and man-made elements to modify the features of a tract of land and its surrounding environment. Landscape architects design these compositions of natural and artificial materials by utilising artistic and technical knowledge gained through academic training as well as practical experiences. They produce master plans and planting plans to propose the landscape changes which are then transferred on the ground by horticulturists and landscape construction contractors. Based on these understandings, Maggie Roe claims that the term landscape should mean, ‘a tract of land shaped over time by geological and biological processes and by human occupation and agency and by human imagination’ (Roe 2007: 3).

  

Photo 2: A landscape drawing is transferred on the ground to produce the final development, Source: Author

In India, Landscape Architecture is taught as a post-graduate specialization course and one needs to have an Architecture undergraduate degree to be eligible for the Masters’ in Landscape Architecture. There are only 4 institutions in the country currently offering the course which means there are about 70 professionals joining the field annually. This gives the profession the disadvantageous tag of small-scale operation and many times landscape architects struggle to establish their credentials within the more dominating fields of architecture and horticulture.

Here, one may ask about the difference between horticulture and landscape architecture. According to American Society of Landscape Architects’ website, horticulturists are trained in the science of growing and producing plants. They are excellent nursery workers and have extensive knowledge about various plant species and their care processes. On the contrary, landscape architects work with what is known as the built environment. They are primarily concerned with the design and use of outdoor space and the land. Even though landscape architects use different types of plants in their design, unlike the horticulturists, they are not experts of only plant biology. In fact, the scopes of landscape profession are extensive and include, but not limited to, site planning, town or urban planning, park and recreation planning, regional planning, garden design and historic preservation.   

Photo 3: Landscape Master Plan of Rajarhat Eco Park, Photo courtesy: Pradeep Sachdeva Design Associates, New Delhi

Landscape as Nature-Culture Hybrid

In recent years, designed landscapes have received much attention, especially from scholars working in the field of geography. This is due to the renewed effort from cultural and environmental geographers in the last couple of decades to engage in debates about the relationship between nature and society at an ontological level. Until recently, nature and society had been seen as completely different ontological domains even though their influences on each other were greatly recognised. Furthermore, modern academic divisions of ‘natural’ science and ‘social’ science strengthened the idea of this dichotomised approach. However, genetically modified agricultural foods, cloning of human genomes and advancement of biotechnology along with mass deforestation, global warming and climate change have brought the question of human-influenced changes in natural systems to the centre stage which in turn have brought the society- nature relationship under limelight. 

Designed landscapes contribute in this debate and it can be claimed that they are artefacts which symbolise what Bruno Latour calls hybrids. Much like Donna Haraway’s cyborgs, hybrids are mixtures of nature and culture. These are neither pure natural nor pure socio-cultural. Authors such as Noel Castree and Bruce Braun claim that hybrid nature always has multiple dimensions- mythic, textual, technical, political, organic and economic- which collapse into each other in a knot of extraordinary density. Designed landscapes have similar presence- they are natural elements but are organised; based on cultural values and functional requirements of the end users. They provide spiritual fulfilments and are underpinned by symbolic meanings. They also inherit aesthetic qualities which provide users with recreation and visual delight.

Thus, designed landscapes are much more than mere decorative gardens and can help us understand how a particular society treats nature and environment at a particular point of time. They embody material realities of the socially constructed ideas about nature. Landscape designers can influence the societal understanding of material nature and thus, in-turn, can dictate human interventions on natural systems to produce sustainable future. Unfortunately, Indian landscape thinkers are yet to fully fathom the importance of their works and are mostly concerned with the external looks of these designed environments. Many discussions of Indian landscape design revolve around whether the design should look traditional or modern, formal or informal, more greenspaces or more hardscapes and so on. These debates, even though important from a design perspective, render the professional thinking rather superficial and miss out the deeper concepts about society-nature dualism and their implications.

Photo 4: Formal gardens of Rastrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, Photo courtesy: Internet

Photo 5: An informal terrace garden at Chennai, Photo courtesy: Internet

Thoughts on Future Landscape Debates

At this point it is necessary to quickly point out the drawbacks of purely form or aesthetic based discussions on designed landscapes. If landscapes are considered valuable only for their visual appeal, it makes the society to believe that nature has only one function to perform - which is to provide recreation and cosmetic value addition to our living spaces. This attitude in-turn commodifies nature and environment - a phenomenon that can be observed in India to a large extent. Especially after India’s economic liberalization, landscapes are now seen as value addition to commercial developments such as shopping malls, five star hotels, and corporate office campuses of MNCs etc. Large sum of money is spent in landscape beautification of these developments of modern era. Even urban development practices are adopting landscape beautification as a strategy to package a city as an ideal destination for national and foreign investments. Another aspect of contemporary Indian landscape design is that in many cases traditional designs are incorporated in places of tourist interest in order to attract foreigners. These designs try to recreate traditional landscape features such as ghats, sacred groves and Mughal gardens in urban areas which are completely out of context. These practices further commodify nature and culture and can demote the value of ecology and environment.

Photos 6 and 7: Carefully created traditional landscapes at Sanskriti Kendra near Delhi (Above) (Photo: Internet) and Dakshinchitra in Chennai (Below) (Photo: Author)

Indeed, tradition and culture play vital roles in the dynamics of contemporary Indian societies. As these societies try to find their root in pre-colonial past, they also, at the same time, try to incorporate modernisation and western lifestyle through globalization and economic liberalization. For landscape architects, it is very important to strike the right balance between tradition and modernization through appropriate design approaches. To achieve that, designers need to adopt the right philosophy and consider landscapes as hybrid artefacts. In this way and by following Latour, they can incorporate social and political relations and understandings within the concepts of designed landscapes. This will help in developing a holistic understanding of society-nature dualism and the designers then will be able to guide a social transformation which will respect nature not only for its aesthetic qualities but also for its intrinsic ecological values.    

Author's Bio- Note:

Senjuti Manna is a Landscape Architect currently pursuing her PhD at University of Reading, UK. She did her Architecture under-graduation from Anna University, Chennai and Landscape post-graduation from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. She worked as a lecturer in Manipal Institution of Technology, Karnataka and practiced as a landscape consultant in Kolkata before moving to the UK in 2009. She can be reached at Senjuti@gmail.com