NATION, NATIONALISM AND NATION-BUILDING AND AN EDITOR CALLED RAMANANDA CHATTERJEE

This book is all about Nation and nationalism -  words that are bandied about quite freely these days. Without much thought being devoted to the complicated concepts embodied in these words it has become the most convenient way of winning an argument simply by dismissing those that don’t agree with you as ‘anti-national’. For the past several decades governments have even coined a respectable looking term called ‘anti-national activities’ to initiate legal action against their opponents. Initially I too took these terms for granted not stopping to think what they really meant till I stumbled upon a man called Ramananda Chatterjee.

It was an intriguing meeting as it took place about 53 years after his death. This chance meeting was all the more surprising due to the fact that I was born a dozen years after Ramananda died. It is time I think that I should clear the air. The year was 1996 and I had already put in more than 13 years as a journalist and was searching for newer horizons. My wife’s uncle (Dr. Bhabani Sengupta), who was a journalist, scholar and author, came to know of my scholarly ambitions. Taking pity on my rather pathetic efforts to gain intellectual respectability he suggested that I carry out a study on ‘The Modern Review’ and its editor Ramananda Chatterjee. I knew nothing about either but based on inputs provided by Dr. Sengupta I submitted a proposal to the KK Birla Foundation which found the proposed project worthwhile and awarded me a fellowship to carry out research on the subject. Twenty-three years of study, reading, discussions and thought have resulted in the publication of a biography of a forgotten man and his journals – ‘Media and Nation-Building in Twentieth Century India: The Life and Times of Ramananda Chatterjee’.     

To tell the story of Ramananda, he brought out three journals – one each in English, Bengali and Hindi. He edited the first two himself and got Hindi scholar Benarsidas Chaturvedi to handle the third. They were named ‘The Modern Review’ (English), ‘Prabasi’ (Bengali) and ‘Vishal Bharat’ (Hindi) and their aim was to imbibe the national spirit among Indians whose self-esteem had been reduced to the negative by their British rulers. His journals carried articles on a wide range of topics of current interest and they would cover almost every aspect of life – education, history, archaeology, science, technology, sculpture, art and travel. They were topped by several pages of straightforward editorial analysis of public affairs, sometimes so straightforward that they got him into trouble with the authorities. But he carried on nonetheless and even made a commercial success of his magazines though it was modest by the standards of profits made by media houses these days.

My next entry will be on his reaction to the Jalianwalabagh incident and subsequent repression in the Punjab in 1919.
You can find a brief note on the book on the link https://www.routledge.com/Media-and-Nation-Building-in-Twentieth-Century-India-Life-and-Times-of/Chatterjee/p/book/9780367086602 

GOOGLE AS PIED PIPER

As we snaked our way in the car through villages and fields in the closing darkness I wondered, not without trepidation the power that media giant Google has begun to exercise on our lives. In the past spiritual gurus used to exercise a similar power over ordinary people who would blindly follow them in search of a direction in their lives. We too followed the directions obtained on Google Maps displayed on the smart phone on our way back to Delhi from a holiday in the hills in search of a quicker way to get home through the heavy traffic. But once we diverted from the highway I had the feeling of following some kind of a pied piper who would lead us God knows where. It could be to the right destination but it could also be to the edge of the precipice and destruction.

On the way out we had discovered a relatively clear route along the Upper Ganga Canal that had avoided the usual congested towns. On the way back too, therefore, we were keen to take the same way back so that we got home well in time for the early dinner. God (and Google) had other plans for us. We found the Canal after a brief stopover at Khatauli but about 25 to 30 kilometres down the road we got stuck in a traffic pile-up. It was here that Google Maps kicked in showing us an alternative route. Dusk was closing in but trusting Google, as if it was like the good old spiritual gurus of the past, we got off the main highway on to the narrow village lanes and bye-lanes, sometimes paved with either bricks or tiles and sometimes just mud tracks, meant for bullock carts and tractors not highway traffic.

Startled men, women, children and cattle made way, not just for us but for dozens of other cars that had taken the same detour to get past the pile-up. It became obvious that they too had put their travelling fates in the hands of Google Maps. My daughter was reading the maps and directing her brother who was at the wheel as we bumped along through the darkness apparently in the middle of nowhere. The only comfort that we were on the right way was the row of headlights and tail-lights in front and behind. Like us there were many who apparently following Google Maps religiously. We became aware of the many hazards of the unknown path that Google Maps had opened for us as we saw one car pull up on the side to change a flat tyre – flattened no doubt by the jagged stones. In one place we honked our way past a marriage procession while in another we were held up for a short while as a posse of policemen conducted a raid on public drinkers. In fact, I wondered whether Google has ever thought about the large number of people it inconveniences in its quest for information and more information about the way that people travel in India. These lanes and bye-lanes were certainly not meant for highway traffic.

Eventually we did get on to the national highway but not before getting stuck in another pile-up but this time purely the creation of Google Maps who had led a whole legion of holiday travellers into it through their smart phones. We got back just before midnight though Google had promised that at the outside it would be just 8 p.m. Life was much simpler in an age gone by when we would just trust our own instincts and the reassuring physical landmarks to get our bearings. In any case if you got lost you could always find a helpful shopkeeper or passer-by to put you back on the right track. But there was fun and adventure even in getting lost as one discovered the unexpected. These days the virtual world of the smart phones appear to be more real than the real one around us.