Rabindranath Tagore and the Nation By Dr. Rita Banerjee

The Indian Story in Myanmar By Dr. Sonu Trivedi

March-November 1917: Russian Revolution

Vladimir IIyich Lenin 

Life-Sketch 

                                                                                                               (Extract)

           Vladimir IIyich Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 in the town of Simbirsk on the Volga.... His father was an inspector of schools. After finishing secondary school Lenin entered the University of Kazan. But soon afterwards he was arrested by the tsarist authorities for taking part in the revolutionary movement of the students and was banished from Kazan. In 1889 Lenin settled in the city of Samara, where he continued to study the works of Marx and Engels, and organized a Marxist circle.... He studied at home and in the autumn of 1897 got his law degree. In 1895 he united the workers’ Marxist circles in St. Petersburg into a single organisation, the League of Struggle for Emancipation of the Working Class. This organisation was the embryo of the well-known revolutionary workers’ party in Russia.

       

           In December 1895 the police arrested Lenin and other leaders of the League.... During the three years of exile Lenin wrote many theoretical works and articles in which he developed Marxist teachings and presented correct answers to the urgent fundamental questions confronting the working class movement of Russia.

          In January 1900 Lenin came back from exile with a plan to publish a political newspaper.... While in Germany, he succeeded in making arrangements to publish the newspaper Iskra, which was smuggled across the border into Russia by friends.

          Lenin’s relentless struggle for the establishment of a proletarian party in Russia was crowned with success. The party (now the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) rallied Russia’s proletariat for the struggle against Tsarism, for the establishment of democratic republic, for the emancipation of the working people from exploitation.

          In January 1905 the first bourgeois-democratic revolution began in Russia.... After the Tsarist authorities had succeeded in crushing the revolution, Lenin, in compliance with a decision of the Party, again left the country for a time.

          When the First World War broke out, Lenin and the other Russian communists resolutely and consistently came out against the imperialist war.

          February 1917 saw the beginning of the second bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia.... The Provisional Government that was set up betrayed the interests of the people and the country; it made preparations to turn Russia  into a colony of foreign imperialism.

         Lenin came back from abroad. He immediately announced a programme for the further unfolding of the revolutionary movement of the workers, soldiers and working peasantry, rousing them to the struggle for establishing a people’s Government in Russia....

------Boundless Faith In People-------

     

         The October Socialist Revolution in Russia became victorious. For the first time in the history of mankind the power passed into the hands of the representatives of workers, peasants and soldiers....

         Immediately after the victory of the socialist revolution the Decree on peace was adopted on Lenin’s initiative, in which the Soviet Government appealed to the belligerent countries and all peoples to conclude a democratic peace immediately. The decree on Peace actually laid the foundation for the policy of peaceful co-existence.

        Lenin headed the first government of the world’s first socialist state. In this office, which he held until his death on January 21, 1924, he displayed his genius as a statesman. Great scholar, leader and organizer, he was closely linked with the people and had boundless faith in their great powers and talents....

        It required tremendous efforts to rehabilitate the country’s ravaged economy. On Lenin’s initiative a plan for the electrification of the country was drawn up and its implementation was begun at once. Lenin believed that in order to build a new society in Russia, it was first of all necessary to develop an up-to-date industry, to help the peasants transform their petty individual farms into largescale machanized collective farms, and to carry through a cultural revolution.

     

        The Essence of Lenin’s teachings is that the abolition of man’s exploitation by man and the transfer of all material wealth to the people form the basis of a new society of true democracy and freedom, which alone can provide a secure life for every person, irrespective of his origin or nationality. And everything the Soviet Government does, everything the peoples of the Soviet Union create and build, is the realisation of Lenin’s dreams, ideas and thoughts.

Source: Shivdan Singh Chauhan Papers, MSS, NMML

23rd March, 1910: Ram Manohar Lohia’s birthday

His views on language issue in India

                                          (Extract)

              I am outlining my views on language as compactly as I can, so that should criticism or ridicule be still poured on them, it should atleast be well founded.

             English does harm to India not so much because it is foreign but because it is in the Indian context feudal. Only a tiny minority of 1% of the population achieves such efficiency in the language as to be able to use it for power or profit. To this tiny minority, English is an instrument of domination and exploitation over the vast masses....

           

            English is an elegant language in its own sphere, not as spiced as French, nor as deep as German, but more competent, inclusive and generous. When we say ‘banish English’, we certainly do not wish to banish it from England or America, nor even from India’s colleges, if it is an optional subject. There is no question of banishing it from the libraries.

           India is the only civilised country in the world, assuming that we are civilised, with an ancient way of life that refuse to die, which runs its legislatures, courts, laboratories, factories, telegraph, railways and almost all government and other public activities in a language which 99% of the people do not understand....

         Original thinking in India died nearly a thousand years ago. It has not yet been revived. A major reason is the stranglehold of English. If some first-class scientists, that only a very few and not really the very top, have been produced in recent decades, it is because scientists do not deal with language so much as with numerals and symbols. The complete blank in social sciences and philosophy, I do not mean the descriptive aspect, but that of their foundations, must be ascribed to the fact that Indian scholars devote as much time, if not more, to accent, phrase and idiom as to depth and consistency of thought. From the school student to the scholar, who struts ephemerally on the stage, a curse has befallen knowledge. Not knowledge of the subject but phrase-making and empty style have become the lode-stars of Indian thinking....

        The question of adequacy of Hindi or other Indian languages should not at all arise. If they are inadequate, they can be made adequate only through use. Not through committees that fix upon technical terms or through the compilation of dictionaries and text books, does a language become adequate. It becomes efficient only through use at laboratories, courts, schools and the like. Its first use may occasion some confusion but shall in no event be more than that caused by a feudal or minority language. The establishment of a language comes first and its evolution afterwards. By reversing this process, India has stultified herself. India’s languages shall never evolve to equal degree with English through this process and the question always be a lag between the evolution of Bengali, Tamil or Hindi and that of English unless the drastic remedy is applied. The establishment of these languages may overcome the lag and bring them up to a level where they would be able to compare and perhaps favourably with the most modern and excellent language in the world today.

       The enemies of Hindustani are in reality also the enemies of Bengali, Tamil or Marathi. This has been perfectly obvious over the past decade to anybody who has seen through the nervous anxiety of the upper classes to maintain their domination and exploitation. The attempt to introduce Bengali as medium in Bengal colleges raised a howl precisely from people who shout provincial slogans of a vague but dangerous character. I have tried to make it absolutely clear that the banishment of English does not mean the substitution of Hindi, to those who so desire, it may mean substitution by Tamil or Bengali and all along the line....

          Worst of all, English has made the Indian people feel inferior. Not knowing English, they think they are no good for any kind of public activity and they abdicate. It is precisely such abdication by the mass, which is the foundation for minority or feudal rule. Not through the gun alone but more so through an incomprehensible speech are the people held down. People’s rule is impossible without people’s language....

         English must go. People’s action alone can accomplish it. The capacity of the upper classes to deceive the people is if anything growing. When such ignorant hardening takes place, legislative solutions are not easy and people’s action and sacrifice can alone effect a change of attitude....

Dated: 19.09.1962                                                                                 Ram Manohar Lohia


Source : J.P. Narayan Papers (I & II Instalments), MSS, NMML

8th March: International Women’s Day

BANARAS HINDU UNIVERSITY

CONVOCATION WEEK 1949

Lecture on

THE ROLE OF WOMAN IN NEW INDIA

by

Mrs. Hansa Ben Mehta,

Vice-Chancellor,

Baroda University

_____

       21^st November 1949                                                                                                                                                       

(Extract)

           

Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen,

                  I am not much of a speaker and I would have been very happy to have avoided lecturing to you today. But your Vice-Chancellor was very persistent and therefore I have agreed to say a few words to you about the role of woman in New India. When we talk about new India, what exactly do we mean by new India? By new India we mean India that is going to be soon declared a Republic, a Democratic Republic. Now, what does democracy mean or democratic republic mean? Democracy means equality of status, equality of opportunity, freedom in all its aspects, social justice and economic justice and all these irrespective of caste, creed or sex. This means that in future India, there is going to be no distinction, there is to be no discrimination against any individual, on grounds of sex or caste or creed. That being so, if woman is going to have the same position, the same status as man, if woman is going to have the same rights as man, then the part, the role she will have to play will not be very different from that which man will have to play in the New India, which is to build up a country where real democracy will exist. To-day there is no democracy in the real sense of the term. We are divided into several castes and creeds. And every one thinks that his caste is superior to the caste of another man; and every one thinks that his religion is better than, or superior to, the religion of another man. Also man thinks that woman’s position is in the home. She is to be confined within the four walls of the maintenance – that is all. She cannot have a share in the father’s property. In the husband’s home, also she is a dependent. In 1947 Dr. Deshmukh brought a Bill which gives her some share in the husband’s property. But till now she was only a dependent. She had no right even in the husband’s property. It is the man who today is all in all in the home and it is also the man who is responsible for breaking the home. It is not woman who is going to break the home, on the contrary she will want to make it really good, so as to bring up good healthy children, who will be real hopes of new India....

            In this country we never talk about wife, but always of mother, and very rightly for the most important part that woman has to play is that of a mother. We say – Matru devo bhava. In the Scriptures we always talk of mother. Woman as mother has to create new human beings who will be responsible citizens of the new country. I, therefore, appeal to women, those who have come out, who are emancipated, to see that they bring their other sisters out; that they are properly educated. I know it is an uphill task, especially in this province or a province like Bihar where old ideas still prevail. We will have to fight these old ideas. If we fought for our political freedom side by side with men, we can also fight for our social freedom. If woman does not understand the new country that is going to be, she will soon find herself in a sorry state. If man thinks that he is going to be a superior person in the home and outside, then he will be sadly mistaken. Woman will have to fight such notion and will have to see that women do not remain long behind the purdah. It was very unfortunate that we could not put it in the Constitution about purdah being considered an offence as untouchability is considered to be, but we will see that purdah is broken and that the woman comes out of the four walls of the home, and that she comes out, not to break homes but to create better and happier homes.

Source:  Harsha Mehta Papers, MSS, NMML