Symbol of terror

Not many of the present generation are likely to have heard of the Bhawal sanyasi. His case — a princeling who literally rises from the funeral pyre to reclaim his zamindari, the second largest in East Bengal — was mind-boggling. Opposing him was his wife (as she claimed to be) and her brother, who denounced him as an imposter. The issue was fought out in the district, sessions, the Calcutta high court and finally it was heard by the privy council in London. It was the most bizarre case in legal history, in fact much stranger than fiction. I have not come across anything of the kind and often wondered why it had not been turned into a gripping novel. I read two on the subject which left me dissatisfied because they read like fiction, whereas the facts were stranger and more credible.

The story began in 1901 at Jaidebpur, the headquarters of the Bhawal Raj, not far from Dhaka. The family consisted of six siblings — three sisters and three brothers, Ranendra, Ramendra and Rabindra. Of these, the second rajkumar, Ramendra, handsome, light-skinned and grey-eyed, was the central character. He was not interested in studies and preferred to spend his time in hunting, whoring, drinking and making merry. In his mid-twenties he was married off to 13-year-old Bibhabati. It made no difference to his style of living.

The women of the household stayed on the upper floors of the sprawling rajbari, the men on the ground floor. Ramendra continued to entertain prostitutes in his apartments and occasionally sent for his teenage wife to fulfil his matrimonial obligations. He also visited Calcutta, taking his cronies along with him to enjoy the lighter-skinned Anglo-Indian hookers. It was not surprising that he was removed to Darjeeling. His wife and her brother were with him. On May 6, 1909, his condition took a turn for the worse and he died two days later. His body was cremated the same evening. His widow, accompanied by her brother, returned to Bhawal raj.

Twelve years later (1921), an ash-smeared bearded sadhu with grey eyes arrived in Bhawal Raj. He bore a remarkable resemblance to Rajkumar Ramendra. He could not speak any Bengali, only Hindi. By then rumours had been going round East Bengal that Rajkumar Ramendra had not died and that while he lay on the funeral pyre prepared for him, there was a cloud-burst and the mourners had taken shelter in a hut. A Naga sadhu passing by saw that the man on the pyre was alive and carried him away to safety. He was miraculously cured of syphilis but lost his memory.

Most people, including members of his family — mother and sister, barring his wife and her brother — believed this story. The issue was fought over bitterly in many courts right up to the privy council till 1946.

The story has been told as it should be in A Princely Imposter? The Kumar of Bhawal and the Secret History of Indian Nationalism by Partha Chatterjee. Here is the history of half-a-century told as histories should be told. Amitav Ghosh is right in holding that it “will soon be regarded as a classic”.

A little extreme

Sometime in the Seventies, I had read in a column, Now & Again, in The Statesman a piece which impressed me so much that I sent a letter of appreciation to the then editor of the paper, Evan Charlton, with the request that it be forwarded to the author. A few days later I got a two-line note of thanks from a Ranjit Kumar Gupta. The letter-head read, “Commissioner of Police, Calcutta”.

I did not hear from him for the next 15 years till he came to see me at my hotel on one of my visits to Calcutta. By then he had retired from service and taken to writing. His chief interest was anthropology. He had published two books, Poverty and Power in Rural Bengal and Essays on Economic Anthropology.

He was a short, stocky, powerfully-built man with a passion for horses and polo. He spoke English like a sahib, without a trace of a Bengali accent. The only interests we shared were books and liquor. I restricted myself to two pegs of Scotch at Sundown; he liked a few Cognac, whatever the time. We got on very well.

He regaled me with stories of his encounters with Naxalites and other underground Marxist-inspired revolutionary groups. He has now put them in a book, The Crimson Agenda: Maoist Protest & Terror. He paints a grim picture of the communist-inspired parallel administration, down from Nepal to Andhra.

“In more than one-fifth of Indian territory, the writ of the left-wing extremists holds sway. Many jungle areas in Madhya Pradesh are out of bounds of junior forest officers. When the Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express derailed in Rathigarh in September 2002, the Bihar police avoided travelling through Naxalite-infested tract, consequently delaying action. At many places, the police and the revenue system have been rendered redundant. ‘Jan adalats’ held in Naxalite areas pass death sentences, readily executed. Even the junior bureaucracy of the state attends these ‘jan adalats’.

“The PWG and the MCC are working with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to establish a Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ) stretching from Nepal to the south of Andhra Pradesh and the Tamil Nadu sea coast. The CRZ once achieved, will be an impregnable wedge between north-east and the rest of India. In Nepal, 32 of its 75 districts are officially admitted to be in the Maoist cauldron. The extremist movement is also a strong magnet to the rural and urban youth.

“There are forty parties calling themselves Maoist, claiming direct descent from Charu Mazumdar’s Naxalite party that made blood-curdling news in 1967-71. With suitable State action, that uprising was scotched. The present Naxalites have learnt from Charu Mazumdar’s mistakes. They are better trained, better equipped in arsenal and in leadership, and seem determined to achieve their agendas of social engineering swiftly.”

Parts of a whole

American Tourist: Where were you born?

Banta : Punjab

American : Which part?

Banta: What do you mean by “which part”? Oye, my “Whole Body Born” in Punjab.

(Contributed by J. P. Singh Kaka, Bhopal)