The
Idea Of An Interview With Castro in Havana
Saeed Naqvi
Culled from a four hour conversation,
the two part TV interview with Fidel Castro in Havana in 1990, remains one of the
most valued treasures in my journalistic archives.
Why would an interview with Castro
supersede in its value all the others spread over a hundred countries?
A mind reared in Awadh’s Urdu ambience
inherited certain attitudes. These faded during years at school, but left their
traces nevertheless. To begin with our elders were in opposition to the British
who had caused their wonderful Kings to vanish from Lucknow and Delhi. Over
time, these attitudes translated themselves into anti colonialism, anti
imperialism. This was Urdu’s foreign policy.
Urduwallas faced a contradiction. The
language, and the culture accompanying it, had prospered under a feudal system.
It was intellectually untenable for the Urdu elite to oppose Imperialism but be
supportive of feudal excesses. And yet taking up cudgels against the feudal
order would be tantamount to biting the hand that feeds. The situation was more
complicated: the bigger Nawabs, Rajas and Taluqdars had made peace with the new
British rulers.
The feudal system in Awadh, as
elsewhere, was hierarchical and depended on agrarian exploitation. But it was
not tyrannical socially. Unlike the polo and tennis playing princely order in
Rajasthan and Saurashtra, the Awadh feudal elite encouraged a life of the mind.
Diction, quip, repartee, wit, lyric, music, conversation. Libraries were
common. Saraswati was on a pedestal.
Urdu poets did prosper under feudal
patronage but they also enjoyed the freedom to give vent to their thoughts.
Proximity to the Sufis enabled them to keep their ears close to the ground.
This is how a courtly language was also filled with Mir Taqi Mir’s folksy
flavour, sometimes derived from Kabir.
Marx was nowhere in Mir’s or Ghalib’s
ken and yet both wrote poetry with a bent which today would be called leftist.
“Na mil Mir ab ke Ameeron se tu
Huey hain gharib inki daulat se hum”
(Mir, do not mingle with the wealthy
Their wealth has impoverished us)
Ghalib derides the market as a promoter
of philistinism:
“Gharat gar e namoos na ho gar hawas e
zar
Kyon Shahid e gul bagh se bazaar mein
aaye?’
(pursuit of greed, destroys beauty; why
should a flower,
the essential beauty of a garden, be
sold in the dusty marketplace.)
By early 20th century,
particularly after the Bolshevik revolution, Marxist-Leninist ideas had entered
the mainstream of Urdu literature.
Majaz Lucknavi was to wear his leftist
credentials on his sleeve:
“Baeen rindi, Majaz ek shaere mazdoor or
dehkan hai;
Agar shehron mein woh badnaam hai,
badnam rehne do”
(His drunkenness notwithstanding, Majaz
is a poet of peasants and the workers;
Do not bother if he has a bad reputation
among the urbane elite.)
Political leaders of the Left, notably
P.C. Joshi of the CPI, tapped into this reservoir of post feudal awakening.
Talents like Balraj Sahni were drawn to Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA).
The Progressive Writers Movement brought under its umbrella Krishen Chander, Rajinder
Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi,
Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, a host of others. A remarkable detail is
often overlooked: from the earliest Urdu poets to the most recent ones, not one
ever wrote a line – not a line – supportive of religious orthodoxy, the mullah or capitalism.
“Sarmayadari” was always a curse.
In our formative years, a stream
parallel to the left inclined aesthetics of Urdu poetry, was the composite
nationalism projected by the Congress party. The two streams converged on the
persona of Jawaharlal Nehru. Disillusionment with Nehru set in with
retrospective effect much later.
My initiation into journalism coincided
with Nehru’s death. But Leftism or Nehruvian socialism remained fashionable
until the Soviet collapse in 1990-91.
As Rajiv Gandhi’s principal Secretary,
when Gopi Arora drew up a list of journalists for the young Prime Minister to
meet, he placed Nikhil Chakravarty, a card carrying communist, at the top of
the list.
“In a developing country” Gopi
explained, “the Left will continue to provide intellectual leadership.”
This framework was shattered with the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was at this turning point in world
affairs that I arrived in Havana. I had pulled all the strings I could with the
Prime Minister’s office, Ministry of External Affairs, Communist leaders in
Ajoy Bhawan and, ofcourse, the Cuban embassy in New Delhi. The prospect of a
world scoop was undoubtedly a motivating factor. But professionalism alone did
not explain the extraordinary effort I made for the Castro assignment. Iconography
sketched on my mind in my formative years also played a role.
I carried all this boyhood baggage in my
head, as I nervously waited for a message from the “Commandante’s” secretariat.
At 7.00 pm my crew and I were ushered
into a spartan office. At about 9.30 pm Castro made an appearance, looking
larger than life in his fatigues. That he spoke in Spanish did not create any
distance. With such speed and clarity did his petit interpreter anticipate his
ponderous Spanish that one did not miss any nuance.
When I told him that I had set the camera
in the lawn outside, he insisted that we have “coffee or brandy” and “relax”
before stepping out for the interview. The brandy session lasted till 11.30 pm.
The interview is available on youtube.
What was playing most on his mind was Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika
(restructuring) that Gorbachev had embarked on. Both were acceptable concepts,
“provided the pace is controlled”. He did not say it in so many words, but he
feared that Gorbachev may have lost control. Events proved Castro right.
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