Remembering Kalimohan

Facebook is one of those newfangled Global Kalor Dokan cum cork board, where friends drop in, pin a note or a picture, read up on others notes, and generally stay in touch. My circle of friends had quickly risen to over 400 when I realized I could not do justice to such a large number and have pruned it down to 140, which has slowly now swollen to 170 or so.

There, I had spoken about starting to write in a blog or something, about my grand father Kalimohan Ghosh. I have had requested by Tirthankar and Mandakanta Bose to do so. Other than that, Tan Lee da and his wife Leena Chatterjee too have been asking me to write something about Tagore’s views on rural reconstruction and the importance Sriniketan had to his views of overall development of human potential for India.

Ananda, Tan Lee da’s son, sent a note from California on Facebook, which I shall include here:

Quote :

Village-scale development, coupled with economic re-localization, may be the most important area of study and thought for the world in crisis....your grandfather's work and the ideas of Elmhirst, Tagore and others remains an unfinished odyssey........worthy of revival.

Unquote

While this might show an example how Facebook helps like minded but distant people keep abreast of each other and draw encouragement on worthy tasks, it is the content of his note that is worthy of consideration.

Ananda describes the world in a crisis, and mentions the need for village scale development and a shift in the centers of economic activity back to the villages. These were the very themes that bothered people like Gandhi and Tagore, in their quest to think through the right path for India after she gained independence.

But, how was life in Birnhum in the 1930s, when Rabindranath was using what help was available, both with hands on experimentation as well as systematic study of the situation?

I shall quote here from the October 1934 issue of Sankhya, the Indian journal of statistics, edited by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, written by Dr. Hashem Amir Ali, and assisted by Tara Krishna Bose and J.N. Talukdar, of Visva Bharati Institute of Rural Reconstruction, Sriniketan.

Quote

Rice is the basis of rural economy in lower Birbhum. Cleaned rice constitutes 98.8% of the total exports from Bolpur station. Out of the total cultivated area in the jurisdiction of the Visva-Bharati Central Co-operative Bank, 90% is under rice alone.

In this, as in many other parts of India, the rice plant provides the grain for human food, its straw is used for fodder as well as for providing shelter. It is by the sale of his surplus in rice that the villager obtains the cash to pay the rent and the revenue. If the harvest of rice is good, there is plenty of food and sufficient money in the villages. If the rice crop fails, there is general disorganizations: loans get overdue to the Co-operative Societies, the cattle starve, the houses go unthatched. In normal years those whose fields have yielded a good harvest are prosperous; while those whose fields have been barren are exposed to the ills of poverty. Indeed, so much depends upon the yield of rice that the importance of detailed field studies on various aspects or rice cultivation cannot be over-emphasized.

Unquote

The person who encouraged Mahalanobis to arrange for this study around Bolpur, was Tagore. Yes, the need for detailed field study on various aspects of rice cultivation cannot be over-emphasized. Likewise, the effort Tagore had put in towards Sriniketan being a centre for this study and for active engagement in all fields of rural reconstruction, also cannot be over-emphasized.


While Mohalanobis was the statistician, Leonard Elmhirst was the policy developer and Dorothy the donor, Kalimohan was the social worker, all contributing towards the same end.

Today, Sriniketan is a hollow ghost of its original self, regretfully. There has been progress on one side, and stagnation on another. That work, like Ananda says, remains an unfinished odyssey, worthy of revival.

However, I cannot but notice that some of the observations made by Tagore a almost a century ago, regarding division between people, and the rural community being exploited, remains so till today. What has changed is that the Englishmen are gone, and have been replaced by a ballooning urban middle class that appear perhaps as ignorant and uncaring of the rural heart land as any Englishman was.

Meanwhile, the world is possibly facing a crisis of unsustainable overconsumption and degradation of its rural landscape, while stripping the planet of its nourishment faster than the planet can replenish the drain.

There is a rising awareness that something is seriously amiss, not just in India, but in the entire world, with the western theory of progress, growth and wealth creation.

India could have been a path finder for the rest of the world. Good work was started by a number of people in a number of ways a long time ago, for the future generations to carry on this vitally important task.

Kalimohan was a small but important piece in that puzzle, and is today more or less forgotten, as has Sriniketan and what it represented has been forgotten.


Meanwhile, the rising middle class was busy following a western tinted dream, and we neglected this important work, once Tagore, Gandhi and the like were gone from among us.

We blew it. And as Ananda says, we are now at a crisis.

But, I was supposed to write about my grand father - and not the ills of western consumer driven economic model. It is hard, in my mind, to keep the two related issues apart.

My grand mother remembers times when Kalimohan would not return home for days on end, stuck in some remote village on some urgent work. Those days the primary mode of transport was originally walking, cycling or a bullock cart. Later, he got a pony. Even later, for medical emergencies in rural villages, a motor vehicle was sometimes made available from Santiniketan. But the roads to the villages were bare earth and in monsoon would be a sea of mud where nothing wold go, not cycle, nor a bullock cart or motor vehicle. One would have to walk miles through the mud to reach a village. In summer and the rainy season, the heat would sap your strength. And then there were the mosquitoes, and the threat of the infectious decease of malaria through mosquito bites.

Kalimohan would be stuck in remote corners, sometimes shoring up a bank of a river with newly formed village volunteer groups, or preparing temporary shelters for flood victims, or cutting trenches for drainage of stagnant water, or presiding over disputes between Hindu and Muslim villages, or collecting frayed centuries old family owned manuscripts that the owners are not longer able to maintain, and wish to hand over to Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, to preserve and study.

I have spent long hours listening to Manorama Ghosh mention not just her memories of her husband and his works, but even after his death, the degree of respect that was extended to her from unexpected quarters, just because she was the bibi of “Kali babu”.

More later.

Let me know how you like it. Consider placing your comments at the bottom of the post, where they remain me and others to see.

Thanks

Tonu