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Europe In Convulsions Even As Corbyn Rises In Britain

Europe In Convulsions Even As Corbyn Rises In Britain

                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

From Rome to London the contrast was sharp – from political despair to hope.

A comprehensive conference on Afghanistan, superbly organized the NATO Foundation was the only redeeming feature in Rome. Meetings with journalists and think-tanks on the margins were depressing.

The Far Right leader of the ruling coalition, Matteo Salvini of the League, whose early act as Deputy Prime Minister was to order a boat full of North African migrants to be allowed to drift towards Spain, is rising on the popularity charts. He is much the most popular leader in Italy with his anti-immigrant rantings. To firm up ideological bonds, Marine Le Pen, of France’s National Front, visited Salvini recently. If this was not a sufficient shot in the arm for Italian fascists, White supremacist, once President Trump’s soulmate, Steve Bannon, arrived to give a fillip to his plot – Brothers of Italy, they are called, under a title a canopy which Bannon calls “The Movement”. “Bannon is here frequently to confer with Salvini and meet some of us” says Francesco Galieti, journalist who also advises investors.

Bannon is the spider in the web wherever ultra-nationalism, illiberal economics, leavened with dollops of racism rears its head. On Brexit too he is putting in his mite to accelerate the break with EU. Just as committed on the other side of the debate is the even more powerful, anti-Brexit Billionaire, George Soros. They are both in convulsions to save the world from the curse of anti-capitalist headwinds.

There is a common anxiety but with distinct right wing prescriptions.

Bannon must not be overdrawn but he does represent an impulse to navigate the leaky boat of capitalism away from any real or imaginary leftward lurch.

The desperation of this lot is manifest even as far as Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro, who romanticizes the likes of Pinochet, has support from the same interests who are stitching together fascism in Europe. Steve Bannon has been advising Bolsonaro’s media team. His appearance on a Nigel Farage radio show created a minor storm. Farage, of the former Independence Party, leads the anti-Brexit movement with a self-explanatory title – Leave Means Leave.

Removed from anti Brexit extremism are countries like Austria, Poland, Hungary and the Nordic North, which are anti migrant, on occasion anti-Semitic. Bannon has no interests here; Soros does.

Against this broad canvas of despairing gloom, I would like to state, on the pain of being repetitious, that Britain provides relief. For many in Britain this relief is mingled with fear because the right wing media has painted Jeremy Corbyn in lurid colours. The Conservative Party, not to be confused with the rightist aberrations stretches from European continent to Latin America and elsewhere is in convulsions over both Brexit and Corbyn. Prime Minister Theresa May is looking at the “Exit” door in a sort of daze. She does not quite know how to handle the several balls up in the air. A break with EU will prompt Scotland sewing up its own deal with Brussels. Also, since this will entail the border between Belfast and Dublin demanding visa clearances, the Democratic Unionist leader, Arlene Foster will break with Theresa May, bringing down her government. The whole point about Unionism in Ulster is to be “exactly” like the rest of Britain, says Foster. Any arrangement exclusive to Northern Ireland will not be acceptable to the Unionists.

Meanwhile, the right wing of the conservatives, say, former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson and his cohorts are threatening to throw a ginger fit if Brexit is “softened” a means of placating the urge to “remain”, which is noticeable on both sides of the aisle.

Ambiguity afflicts the Labour Party too but it has the advantage of being in the opposition. It is under no compulsion to show its hand. It is simply waiting for an embattled Prime Minister to trip up. That would mean fresh elections which Labour is expected to win easily.

His opponents would not accept it but Labour Party has a charismatic leader in Jeremy Corbyn who has emerged even more firmly in control after the annual Party conference in Liverpool last month.

During his speech Corbyn made an offer to Theresa May. “Labour MPs would vote for a soft Brexit deal which keeps Britain in the Customs Union with the EU”.

What would be the Labour Party’s position on a growing demand for a fresh referendum on Brexit? I had put this question to Corbyn two months ago. His response was very political. “The people have voted for Brexit in a referendum. Let the government negotiate a deal with Brussels which is acceptable to the British public.”

Corbyn was very conscious of the many inconsistencies among Labour voters, constituency to constituency, during the referendum. But as an opposition leader and Prime Minister in-waiting, his job was to wait for May to make mistakes.

With Corbyn as Prime Minister looming large on the horizon the media, which has placed him consistently in a negative searchlight, has a huge challenge on its hands: how to begin to adjust to the reality of Corbyn.

He continues to say things which make those elements of the Conservative Party who are wrapped in a very Anglaise-Britishness, very uncomfortable. For instance he would like schools to have in the text books those aspects of British history which illuminate negative aspects of colonialism. This when the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in April 2019 may well be a high profile event during the Indian election season.

Little wonder a magazine like the Economist still makes Corbyn look like Che Guvera, a beret and the revolutionary leader’s trademark beard et al.

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Manto Speaks Post Partition Truth With Relentless Fury

Manto Speaks Post Partition Truth With Relentless Fury

                                                                            Saeed Naqvi

Nandita Das’ film on the subcontinent’s greatest short story writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, brought alive memories of days when it was fashionable to be on the left. That is where all the progressive writers were – Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Ismat Chugtai, Sahir Ludhianvi, Krishen Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, the lot. The Pied Piper who lured them to Bombay (Mumbai) was the innovative Secretary General of the CPI, P.C. Joshi. As part of the trend, actors like Balraj Sahni gave a boost to the Indian Peoples’ Theatre. Socialism even in Raj Kapoor films was influenced by the ambience that this lot had generated. They determined the character of Bollywood by their lyrics, dialogue and sheer presence. Subsequently, the influence disappeared, but not totally. Witness Nandita Das.

At one level, Manto’s uncompromising realism sustains the tension throughout the film because it clashes with the dogmatic idealism of his colleagues. Das assembles many of them and their friends in cinema, Ashok Kumar, Shyam (Chaddha) in the first Independence Day party where the legendary Jaddan Bai regales the gathering. The teenage girl behind her mother Jaddan Bai is unmistakably Nargis. It is superb casting. The way Manto protects Ashok Kumar through a mob of Muslim rioters is unbelievably realistic. His parting with his closest friend the handsome actor Shyam because of Partition is rich in poignancy.

The Partition of India is replete with many tragic ironies but tragedies pale before the incident that Manto picks on as a metaphor for the mayhem: Toba Tek Singh.

When the newly formed governments of the two countries complete the identification of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan’s mental asylum and Muslims left in such institutions in India, the governments decided to transfer them to the countries they were now deemed to be citizens of.

When Bishan Singh, a Sikh in a Pakistan asylum is being transferred to India under police escort he learns that his hometown, Toba Tek Singh has been left in Pakistan. Bishan Singh begins to walk in the opposite direction. The last scene shows him lying in no-man’s land. Let Manto end the story in his own words: “There, behind the barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between on a bit of earth, which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh. This is just one of the Manto stories Nandita Das weaves effortlessly into her film.

“Thanda Gosht” or “Cold Meat”, a controversial masterpiece, becomes one of the film’s supporting columns. It provides occasion for a court drama where Manto defends himself against charges of obscenity. Faiz Ahmad Faiz as a witness in the case exposes the earliest fissures in the Progressive Writers Movement. In his testimony, Faiz describes “Thanda Gosht” as not the “highest form of literature” but clearly not obscene either.

The backdrop, once again, are the riots following Partition, the cataclysm Manto could never wrench himself away from. A well built Sikh, Ishwar Singh, has returned after joining the looters. In fact he has even murdered five men with his kirpan (sword). But when he is unable to make love to the passionate Kalwant Kaur, she, in a moment of suspicion and jealousy, slits his throat with the very same kripan, demanding that he tell her who he has slept with.

The story’s final climax is – it has many – when a dying Ishwar Singh confesses: yes, he lifted a “very beautiful girl” from a house, but when he laid her down, he realized to his horror………………….she was dead, “Thanda Gosht”.

An effort to critique Nandita Das’s film has involuntarily, meandered past the brilliant short stories which many readers must already be familiar with. There is a simple reason for my diversion. The succinct, vivid, picturization of so many of the stories have made them more intimately accessible. Those who have read Manto will be enriched. The selection of stories is uncanny. When a doctor asks his helper to “open” (kholdo), the window to allow some light, Sakina (recovered from a riot affected area) gropes for the string of her shalwar in a daze and loosens it. She has developed a pavlovian response to the sound “Kholdo”, so repeatedly has she been raped in captivity. There is a disturbing, Mantovian irony attending the end. On this occasion the instruction “kholdo” is for the window to be opened so that Sakina’s distraught father, who has spent days searching for her, can see her face. I can go on and on.

The extraordinary directorial success lies in what Nandita Das has avoided. Despite the world’s finest short stories at her disposal, she has refrained from creating a catalogue of Manto masterpieces, however seductive the idea may have been. The stories are in the service of the director’s primary purpose: to bring out the multilayered life of a genius, struggling to keep the wolf from door, a difficult proposition when tight fisted publishers buy a short story only for rupees 20 against Manto’s demand for rupees 50. He accepts the humiliation because he is in desperate need for money for his child’s medical treatment.

To be proud, sensitive and constantly in need is a lethal combination. Initially, when Manto copes with the humiliation, he reminds me of Majaz Lucknowi.

“Banyeen sael e gham o sael e hawadis

Mera sar hai ki ab bhi khum naheen hai.”

(A gathering storm of tragedy and pain approaches

But I have not bowed my head – the struggle continues)

Eventually, on a cold December night, Majaz was found in a coma on the terrace of a Lucknow country liquor shop. He died the next morning in Balrampur hospital, surrounded by comrades who happened to be in Lucknow for a Conference of Progressive Writers – Ismat Chugtai, Sardar Jafri, Sahir Ludhianvi. Manto also dies of alcoholism but his is a slow end, by attrition. Both died in their 40’s.

The film’s other attraction is the portrayal of an era along a distinct track – post Partition, mayhem, breakdown of friendships, relationships, Manto’s parting from Bombay deliberately preserving a one rupee debt to a cigarette seller as a “precious” link with the city he loved.

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