Unarmed Poet Who Became a Combatant

Author(s): Poromesh Acharya

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 23, No. 52/53 (Dec. 24-31, 1988), pp. 2730-2731
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4394175
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2 ICICI, 'Export Performance of ICICI Finan-
cial Companies; 1978-79 to 1980-81' 1985.
3 M Patibandla, 'Role of Large and Small
Firms in India's Engineering Exports', EPW,
Review of Industry and Management,
May 28, 1988. Also, 'Firm Size and Export
Behaviour: A Study of the Indian Engineer-
ing Industry', Discussion Paper No 45,
ICRIER, New Delhi, 1987.
4 Ibid.
Unarmed Poet Who Became
5 R Nagraj, 'Sub-Contracting in Indian
Manufacturing Industries: Analysis,
Evidence and Issues' Economic and Political
Weekly.
6 C P Chandrasekhar, 'Investment Behaviour
Economies of Scale and Efficiency in an
Import-Substituting Regime: A Study of
Industries', EPW, Annual Number,
May 1987.
7 M Patibandla, op cit.
progressive means to write about mazdoors
and kissans in a broad sentimental vein, to
depict all the glories of a possible proletarian
revolution and to do all these in a way which
would be understood by the mass in the
street". He was aware of the limited appeal
iwoof modern Bengali poets and believed that
they could not widen their appeal in a situa-
tion where the vast majority of the people
was illiterate. According to him the poet at
present could not soliloquise as he/she could
not address the real audience.
He agreed with Eliot and wrote, "In these

a Combatant times of dereliction and dismay, of wars,

unemployment and revolutions the decayed
PoromeAh Acharya side of things attracts us most. The boredom
and the horror, rather than glory of life, is
our immediate reality. Perhaps that is
Samar Sen was a remarkable poet who knew when to stop writing because we have our roots deep in the
poetry, an uncompromising journalist who championed the cause demoralised petty bourgeoisie and lack the
of democratic rights against state repression and above all a man vitality of a rising class. It is- best to admit
this and write about the class you know well
of integrity.
than to exult in the future glories of a class-
less society. Consciousness of decay is also
FROM the forties up to the mid-sixties gressive poet. He wrote, "my conclusion
power:' He however, was not a defeatist as
Samar Sen (1916-87) was known as one of about Samar Sen is that he is a comparative-
he hoped that soon a stage would be reached
the big five of modern Bengali poetry, poetsly modern poet without being progressive"
who established themselves overcoming the
when to continue as a living writer one must
He even did not think Samar Sen "truly
make a choice.
all pervading influence of Rabindranath creative" but considered him to be "a poet
Tagore. He was also the youngest of them. of a particular genre". Jibanananda Das, Samar Sen almost stopped writing poetry
It is interesting to note that all the five poets
comparing Sudhindranath Dutt's Utpakhi by the late forties. He never answered the
were students of English language and with Samar Sen's Nagarik, two remarkable question why he stopped writing poetry.
literature. Except Sudhindranath Dutta, the poems by these eminent poets, considered However, his argument that modern Bengali
other four, Buddhadev Bose, Bishnu Dey, the latter to be memorable poetic statements poets could not widen their appeal in a situa-
Jibanananda Das and Samar Sen, taught and the former, true poetry. It appears that tion where the vast majority of the people
English in colleges. Except Jibanananda Jibanananda also did not consider Samar was illiterate and that they could only solilo-
Das, the others were very urbane in tempera- Sen to be a creative poet. Buddhadev Bose quise may appear'weak. Their appeal was
ment, and considered elitist. It should also was an admirer of Samar Sen but consideredrestricted to only a small section of literates
be noted that they never had a very wide Bishnu Dey more 'gifted' Samar Sen in an. or, better to say, among the elites' of the
readershiip. Jibanananda was perhaps the interview in 1984 said that he liked some ofliterate and educated Bengali middle class.
most popular poet among them. The other Jibanananda's poems like Lash Kata Ghare They could not even reach the wider sections
outstanding Bengali poet of the time was but refused to comment on his poetry in of literates whom the prose writers'of the
Premendra Mitra. He and Buddhadev Bose general. It may be noted that both Sudhin- time like the three Banarjees, ramsankar,
were the joint editors of the famous poetry dranath and Samar Sen stopped writing Bibhuti and Manik, could address. Was it
magazine Kabita. Samar Sen was the poetry by the late forties. only because prose has wider appeal than
associate editor. When Premendra Mitra left Marxist debate on literature was enrichedpoetry or modern Bengali poetry drifted fur-
Kabita, Samar Sen became the joint editor. with the publication of Samar Sen's essay ther away from the cultural roots of Bengal?
For a time, this literary journal was the entitled 'In Defence of Decadents' in 1939. Saroj Dutta, a classmate of Samar Sen,
mouthpiece of the most modern and elitist Samar Sen began his article with a discus- a revolutionary poet, a brave and uncom-
Bengali poets. sion of the conceptual problem the word promising journalist and above all a com-
In the thirties and forties, modern Bengali 'progressive' poses. He writes, "It is rather munist martyr, severely criticised the essay
poetry was significantly influenced by two easy to talk about our belief in progress with as a plea to escape from revolutionary strug-
English poets, T S Eliot and Ezra Pound. reference to past history. But the moment gle. He would not agree with the author that
Anhalendu Das Gupta, a contemporary jour- .we come to consider the present, to define the Indian midde class could be equated with
nalist, in a recent article has observed, "by the meaning of the progressive movement in the demoralised middle class of capitalist
the mid-thirties Pound and Elliot had literature, we seem to be in a melting pot, societies of the time as India was not a
become fairly well established in Bengali and confuged voices of lamentation, denun- capitalist country in the classicat sense of the
literary and intellectual discourse. More im- ciation and warning strike the ear. The term. He accuse&Lthe author for not recog-
portant, they had begun to influence some modern Bengali poet is between two fires.nising the fact that a sectio&of the Bengali
young poets of the time, especially Bishnu If he tries to be honest with regard to the middle class suffered the pain and tension
Dey and Samar Sen' Interestingly, these vices of his own class and voices his senseof being 'de-classed' for participating in
two Bengali poets were also known to be of decay, he falls under, and is found guilty the anti-colonial, revolutionary and non-
Marxists. of the charges of obscenity and obscurity. cooperation movements. He rightly observed
The Progressive Writers Association was The eternal principles of art, he is told, are thtt the crisis of the literary tradition
organised in Bengal in 1936. However, the beauty and truth, truth and beauty, to deny upheld by the author was for its uprooted
word progressive, particularly in connection which is bad taste, a perversion. On the other character. And it was not possible to over-
with literature, did not convey the same hand he is told from the progressive quarters, come this crisis merely by accepting Marxist
meaning to all. Dhurjatiprasad Mukherjee which emphasise his defeatism and obscunty, ideology at the intellectual level.
and BhupeRdranath Dutta, two known that he is decadent, and damned petty Was this the reas'on why Samar Sen stop-
Marxist authors, wrote two articles defining bourgeois. The damning is thus complete" ped writing poetry? Or was it that he found
progressive literature. In 1937, Dhurjati- With scorn he called them 'sentimental poetry and politics essentially incompatible
prasad did not consider Samar Sen a pro- humanists' who would demand that "to be as Buddhadev Bose pointed out while dis-

2730 Economic and Political Weekly December 24-31, 1988

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cussing the later poems by Samar Sen in his
essay 'An Acre of Green Grass'?
It is interesting to note that in the thirties a mythical character as Ashok Rudra and
and foties Bengal was in great turmoil. The
Bengali middle class, in spite of all its limita- next section.
tions, was by and large much agitated. The
younger generation, particularly the
students, were largely imbued with nationa-
list spirit. Bengali prose could not escape the
spirit of the time but we hardly find any
reflection of this spirit in the post-Tagore
modern Bengali poetry.
It is all the more interesting that Samar
Sen almost kept himself aloof when the
Communist Party of India gave the call of
armed struggle after the Second Congress
of the party held in Calcutta in 1948. Samar
Sen returned to Calcutta from Delhi and
joined The Statesman in 1949. The historic
Tebhaga and Telengana movements were at
the peak and police oppression was let lose
on the communist revolutionaries. Was it not In a way all of us create this fortress around
the critical stage he anticipated in his essay? ourselves. This is perhaps the only way to
However, he had stopped to soliloquise by
then. We even do not find him participating
in the Marxist debate on art and literature
that continued during this time. In fact, till
the mid-sixties, Samar Sen was known only
as a remarkable poet with communist lean-
ings. In the fifties we often used to quote
his lines as we did quote from other non-
Marxist poets like Sudhindranath and
Jibanananda. Subhas Mukhopadhyay and
Sukanta Bhattacharya were surely more
popular than Samar Sen, particularly among
non-intellectual readers. But surely non7eof
them was as powerful.
In the late sixties Samar Sen emerged as
an altogether different person, an uncom-
promising radical journalist who championed
the cause of democratic rights when brutal
state repression crippled the social fabric of
the country. Samar Sen as the editor of Now
and Frontier became a leading light and
stood by the Communist revolutionaries
who were the main target of police brutality
in late sixties and early seventies. Samar
Sen's Frontier created a forum for different
groups of left revolutionaries to exchange
views and news. It became a part of the left
movement.
.Anustup, a Bengali journal of art and
culture, rightly tWok the lead tQ pay tribute
to such a personality by publishing a special
issue' oni Samar Sen. It is a well edited
volume consisting of 643 pages. A glance at
the contents shows that the editors tried to
make it a comprehensive volume. After
going through the volume one finds that
they are more or less successful in their ef-
forts. One gets insightful glimpses Qf dif-
ferent aspects of Samar Sen's life. The con-
tents have been compiled in six broad sec-
tions. In the first section, reminiscences by
seventeen persons who personally knew
Samar Sen, have been compiled. This sec-
tion is no doubt very readable. The remini-
scence by his friend, Debibhusan Bhat-
tacharya, is particularly refreshing. It gives
us glimpses of Samar Sen's student-life. In
their reminiscences, Sumanta Banerjee and
Economic and Political
This content downloaded from 103.42.174.129 on Tue, 16 Oct 2018 08:27:23 UTC
Dipendu Chkrabarty have tried to evaluate if they were known to be active supporters
Samar Sen without trying to project him as of the establishment.
In the second section thirteen persons
some others have done in their articles in the including well known poets, politicians,
economists and other intellectuals, have
Sumanta Banerjee rightly observes that discussed different aspects of Samar Sen's
Samar Sen always stood by the oppressed life and work. This section appears to me
though he could not overcome his class comparatively weak in the sense that many
limitations. To evaluate Samar Sen and his of the authors could not as yet overcome
Frontier he quotes Arun Das Gupta, a their emotional state of mind required for
historian, "Samar Sen had opened up a new an objectivc assessment. One of the main
frontier'for the young generation. In the first drawbacks of the volume is that the authors
stage it was a frontier to be crossed, a space mostly belong to the English educated upper
for re-grouping. At a later stage due to ir- strata of intellectuals. We do not find how
revocable forces of history it turned out to lesser known political activists and ordinary
be a barricade of defence. Perhaps it was in- people understood Sa'ai- Sen and his
evitable, for a group or a party. But in Frontier
another sense, Samar Sen's Frontier was a Thf, next two sections in the Anustup
projection of his own personality-a sarc- volume, may be said to be most interesting
tuary where he could nurture both his and readable. In these two sections two let-
loneliness as well as his individual protests. ters from Rabindranath Tagore to Samar
Sen, Samar Sen's letters to Rabindranath
Tagore, Buddhadev Bose, Bishnu Dey, Chan-
live in these troubled times. But it also turns chal Chattopadhaya, Kamakshiprasad Chat-
out to be a process by which even an unarm- topadhaya and Debiprasad Chattopadhaya
ed poet becomes a combatant" and some other important writings of Samar
Dipendu Chakravarty writes that he was Sen and excerpts from writings on Samar
ambivalent in his attitude on certain occa- Sen by others haVe been reprinted. The lucid,
sions. Dipendu finds publication of Fron- informal and witty Bengali prose of Samar
tier in English, his emphasis on good Sen is really enviable. His letters open up
English, often judging a person by his/her before the readers a very urbane, perceptive
knowledge of English and writing in and and witty mind. Other reprints also help us
maintaining good relations with the big- to understand Samar Sen.
press, incompatible with his political out-
look. No doubt Samar Sen in spite of his * Anustup, Samar Sen Bishes Sakhya,
active sympathy for the oppressed and in- Vol 22, No 2 and 3, 1988, 2E, Nabin
difference towards material success felt at Kundu Lane, Calcutta - 700 009, price:
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