A lyricist, who stirred up a revolution, died unsung

Delhi, Islamabad and Dhaka have long duped their peoples into submission by using ‘national security’ smokescreens and other whipped-up concerns. The partition of the subcontinental British territories created pernicious myths around questions of loyalty, nationality, and identity, refashioning ideas of ‘self’, ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’. Schemes hatched from the deepest bowels of the deep State have considerable power. With the persistent combination of propaganda and guns, carrots and sticks, awards and torture, celebrations and prison-terms, the Nation-States have been able to shape a significant number of humans into anxious, ‘enemy’-hating, self-delusional, narcissistic consumers of ‘national security’ myths. Selfhoods have been forcibly beaten into post-Partition ‘national’ shapes. It’s an epic crime. 

Nation-states demand that loyalty, longing and love should end at the border. The 1971 Bangladesh liberation struggle made some clean-cut things fuzzy. While Delhi had its own calculations and cost-benefit analysis, the people had various reasons ranging from Pakistan-hate to solidarity with a people under attack. But there was something ‘closer’ in the enthusiasm of West Bengal’s Bangladesh solidarity initiatives that run against the grain of unitary Nation-state narratives just like Tamil Nadu assembly resolutions about Eelam Tamils do.

This ‘special’ closeness doesn’t exist any more as West Bengal has also learned to look east through a Delhi lens – hence all it sees now are cattle-smugglers, Islamic terrorists and Muslims plotting a demographic takeover. But while it lasted, it was something that wasn’t quite infidelity or ‘disloyalty’ but a complicated kind of lopsided polyamory that only unfortunate victims of Partition zones can relate to. It is a love that dare not tell its name in front of a Nation-state that demands total fidelity and loyalty not only in public but also in realms of fantasy. Gobindo Haldar was one such lover. He died on 17th January.

Gobindo Haldar was born in Bongaon (now in West Bengal). He was a lyricist for Akashbani. During 1971, many in East Bengal depended on Akashbani to learn things beyond wartime propaganda from Pakistani administration. Later, the Bangladesh government-in-exile set up the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra (Free Bengal Radio), Gobindo was asked by Kamal Ahmed to write songs for them. What he wrote became words that stirred a people in dire need of inspiration in the face of repression and mass-murder, a people resisting a militarily superior force. His most famous songs include Mora Ekti Phulke Bachabo Bole Juddho Kori (We fight to save one flower), Ek Sagor Rokter Binimoye Banglar Swadhinata Anlo Jara (Those who gave a sea of blood to bring freedom to Bengal), Purbo Digonte Surjo Uthechhe Rokto Lal (A red sun has risen in the eastern horizon) and Padma Meghna Jamuna Tomar Amar Thikana (The land of Padma, Meghna, Jamuna rivers is where you and I belong). He died unsung in today’s West Bengal. A ‘foreign’ government sent funds for this poor man’s treatment. During 1971, Free Bengal Radio removed this ‘foreigner’s’ name from the title list — only ‘own’ patriots were allowed. He wrote right songs for the ‘wrong’ nation-state — otherwise he would have shris, bhushans, bibhushans. 

He lived amongst us. We didn’t care, being prisoners of divisive ‘national’ narratives that have made us smaller humans. There may be a billion epics unfolding under our noses, in nations and proto-nations, legal and otherwise, dreamt up and very real, desperately seeking numerous fantastic paradises. Let’s expand and see the many fights for justice for Cornel West says that justice is what love looks like in public. Let’s salute such lovers and have the humanity to criticise ideologies that deem the illicit whispers of Gobindo Haldar as ‘illegal’. 

The author is a commentator on politics and culture @gargac