Seniority Show-off: My Unfolding Voyage 29

Showing off Seniority
When we were in the higher secondary school, a communist revolution was about to change our lives in West Bengal. That was but only in the air: the revolution did happen in the air and it became calm when the revolutionary air swept in, through democratic elections, the communists of a variety to power to the rule the State.
In the early sixties, the State was still the dominating industrial state in India and therefore the most congenial to the business of ‘petty bourgeoisie’ led struggle for higher wages, lower working hours and lower labor productivity of industrial labor so that Marxian exploitation of the capitalist of the power of industrial labor could be progressively reduced. That was the beginning of de-industrialization of West Bengal, aided by the Govt. of India’s Five Year Plans and balanced regional development policy that would throttle the comparative industrial advantage of West Bengal and improve the advantage of Maharashtra and Gujarat while ushering in a deep industrial recession in engineering industries concentrated in West Bengal. That would make the business of ushering communist revolution in West Bengal more attractive with rising numbers joining the unemployed labor force to support. Equally important, the American imperialism was fighting a losing battle in Vietnam and Vietnam struggle the role model for West Bengal’s ‘petty bourgeoisie” upper Hindi caste communist leaders with generally poor educational achievements. Nehru had in the previous decade spoiled the image of socialist revolution in India with his policy of submissive friendship with Russia and China. The young communist recruits were dreaming of ending all injustice soon by establishing anti-American and anti-Nehruvian Socialism in West Bengal. The student’s wing of the communist party was active in protests against the American aggression in Vietnam and Nehru’s Congress Government in the country as well as the State of West Bengal. The Chinese with their aggression had exposed the balloon of mighty India he had been trying to fly across the World. Strikes now spread easily from the factories and offices to educational institutions. By not attending classes, the young communists thought that they could help defeat the Americans in Vietnam: their leaders saw in this an opportunity to get more young recruits. Subhas Chakrabarty, after demonstrating his not-so-great achievements and talents in education, was at the time cultivating his organizing talents by leading youth and student movements against any thing that can be linked to Government oppression and American domination. One day, he led his local party juniors to various schools to ask the students to come out of the class-rooms, mid-way during the school hours, to show solidarity with the fighting Vietnamese against the imperialist, capitalist American military invaders. I am certain the Vietnamese cared little for that solidarity from India.
But the school students here cared little about either the Americans or the Vietnamese but would enjoy an early end to school on some pretext or others. Most of the students would go out from the school gladly back home and teachers would not say anything as to be against Americans was a social fashion in West Bengal since long when the Indians realized that the British which ruled India were not as mighty or as rich as the Americans were. They liked the British who gave them English, English Literature, general western education and nice cities: the British despised the Americans: their slaves learned to do the same.
Of the somewhat risky applications of my Narodian guidance to my classmates, one related to that socio-political environment.The first opportunity had come thanks to the Americans, the Vietnamese and the West Bengal communists. It was not clear to us in those days of closed Indian system what was going on elsewhere in the World, least of all in Vietnam. All that we knew was that the few great economic and military powers in the World were only two: USA and USSR. UK, France and the part of Germany that was not under the control of the Russians were technologically and economically advance countries alright but not super powers. Japan was the rising economic power with strong ties with the US while China with one fifth of the World population under the slavery of Mao’s communist party was struggling to become powerful through USSR help and trying to bully India. Vietnam was not a country worth naming except that the local communists were considering them as Great heroes fighting a bitter battle with the imperialist American military forces in Vietnam. After taking oath in the name of Marx, our communists would take the names of Lenin and Stalin as God’s representatives and Ho Chi Min as a smaller communist god (Mao was yet to gain such a status yet, but will soon win the hearts of new generation communists in the late sixties led by young comrades who could not rise fast in the hierarchy in the Communist Party of India Marxists – called CPM in short). So, at that time, the CPM, led by Harekrishna Konar and Jyoti Basu were building up CPM in West Bengal with great success and they needed to recruit young men who could wean the school and college students to the CPM ideology and join CPM’s political agitation on the streets, schools, factories and offices to stop exploitation of the labor and peasant classes by the industrialists, big land owners and elitist bourgeoisie Many of the young men who would rise in the hierarchy of CPM later and get rewarded for their struggle during the late fifties and the sixties by getting ministries when CPM would come to power in the seventies in West Bengal, were engaged in investing their time and energy in building their political career when we were in the schools and colleges. Not that they had any idea of the material comfort pay-off they would reap later as Ministers: but they had no other alternative to becoming Jyoti Basu’s followers. They had very little chance of winning in any field whether in higher education or government service or sports; for various reasons like lack of talent, capability, minimum economic conditions and etc., they would not have been able to succeed in these highly competitive areas. Choosing to be with CPM did not require talent or skill or investment of capital: rather the alternative to not joining the CPM those days was for such persons idling away productive time of the youth. One of them was Subhas Chakrabarty, who had been a West Bengal Minister for three decades and a very popular leader among various sections of the society from slum dwellers to middle class white collar workers, from blue collar workers to small businessmen, to rogues, goons and mafia to medical professionals (doctors), from playwrights, dramatists and singers to sportsmen, footballers, cricketers and athletes, from rickshaw-pullers, to bus drivers and conductors, from construction firm owners to government contractors and small hotel owners, and so on. But most of these sections of the society he could cultivate only after becoming minister with powers to distribute favors: he rose in the CPM hierarchy initially as a student leader and little later as trade union leader – a leader whose basic task was to organize strikes. Vietnam and Ho Chi Min were the two imported novelties to attract students along with the traditional Marxist theory of surplus value exploitation by the capitalists. Go on strike so that the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist gets reduced. Go on strike to show solidarity with the great Vietnamese fighting the mighty American imperialists and enjoy extra days of school/ college off-days. That was the theory that sold heavily in the 1960s. That was the way to become a student leader even if your performance as a student was hopelessly poor.
On one sunny day of the revolution, Subhas Chakrabarty with his followers, maybe 15 – 20, were moving from school to school and college to college to ask students to come out from the classes as a mark of protest against the American military forces raging the soil of Vietnam and then go home early or enjoy a matinee film show in the local theater. Most students would readily come out of the school and colleges: they teachers would say nothing: another day of leisure for the teachers, besides showing sympathy to the Vietnamese heroes. The American forces had to withdraw ultimately from Vietnam as the American households did not like the idea of continuing loss of US soldiers killed and kidnapped by the Vietnamese guerillas for such a prolonged period. Thus the Vietnamese won the war by their sheer determination. Part of the credit must go the people of West Bengal because they have boycotted classes and agitated on the streets and before the American Consulate offices to demonstrate their solidarity with the Vietnamese.
Most of the boys in our school were just waiting for Subhas Chakrabarty’s team of 20 to arrive at the school gate and ran out of the school’s main 4 storied sprawling building as soon as possible.
On that day, an opportunity had come for the senior students to show their superiority. Our class room was in the first floor of a separate two storied school administrative office building. The economics teacher, Mahendra Babu, asked us whether we would like to go out. My Narodian suggestion to my class of 20 students was that we need not join the strike as the class in Economics was important to us than Vietnam. Moreover, the CPM student union leader was not a worthy student whose call needed any attention by us – the senior students of the school. We are not to act like cattle following some shepherd boy of unknown educational credentials. Most of us agreed not to join the strike call. The visiting striking party of Subhas Chakraborty did not have time even to notice that a single class has stayed back in the school. They had to go to other school and colleges to get the students out of the class. But we did enjoy our share of the holiday. The teachers and the staff did not want to continue to attend the school for the full day with just one class of 20 students. They let us off soon after noon. We did not have to join a strike that meant nothing for us and yet we got our share of half a day off from school. How I wish we had joined that student strike on that day: we could have claimed that we had contributed to the success of the Vietnamese in defeating the American military.
Probably, the Americans and the Vietnamese got to know off our disinterest in their war: the Americans would soon withdraw and the Vietnamese would later become good friends and beneficial trading partners of USA.

While going back from the school on that day, some of us were worried: Subhas Chakrabarty’s CPM would have gotten angry with us when the would have come to know of our not joining the strike and might beat us up as we return home through the road on which CPM’s Dum Dum Headquarters (then thached and now a mulistried, building) was located. But nothing would happen to us. Those days were different: political parties then wanted to recruit more supporters with infinite patience and never thought of bullying or repressing those who remained neutral to political parties. In the early sixties, no political party could afford to threaten, let alone beat up, school students returning home: that would have cost them heavily in terms of public support. Political parties in those days were not expected to be violent: violence was the prerogative of only the criminals and the police beating up agitating supporters of the opposition parties as a measure of protecting law and order. Political parties with violent workers or criminals were not accepted by the general public.
The things would however soon change when political parties would actively cultivate violence and terrorism. CPM would have to fight the violent army of the Naxalites and of the criminals and musclemen who got shelter in the Congress Party. Over the years CPM would turn itself into a party that uses violence to command people’s respect and obedience and would beat all other parties in this area of performance by miles.

Another opportunity to flex muscle of seniority however brought us embarrassment: we did not turn out to be as smart as we had thought of ourselves. smart. The person responsible for ringing the school bell at the beginning of the school, at the end of each class period and at the end of the school one day made a mistake for unknown reasons: he rang the long duration bell that marked the end of the school hours around 3 PM rather than 5PM. We suspected that there was some mistake. But as senior students we thought we could interpret the bell as the end of the school for the day. Before the next period teacher could come to the class, we quietly left the school unnoticed. The next morning, the school principal came to our class as soon as the prayer was over. He was furious and demanded to know from us the reason of en masse quitting of classes two hours earlier than normal.
We had our reply ready: it was because we had heard the final bell ring at 3PM. He asked us since 3PM was not the usual closing time, why had we not checked with the school’s office if indeed that had been the final bell to announce the end of the day? We replied that such a question did not occur to us. The he gave a long lecture, accused us of being “Gyan- Papis” (those who commit sins with full knowledge of what the sin was” and awarded a punishment. For the rest of the day we had to attend the classes standing up on our seats. Fortunately, our class room was in a separate building in the corner of the top floor: no other student in the school would have to pass by our classroom.
We had thought then that the Principal had been correct in his assessment but had not sporting enough! Life ahead would show that seniors are often not sporting enough.