Book Reviews
On Naxalites and Nirad babu
Khademul Islam
Interesting Times in India is an absorbing book by an English missionary who arrived in 1963--on the good ship Caledonia--to teach English literature to "midnight's children" at Delhi's St. Stephen's College. At a time when white missionaries are under attack as having been active connivers in empire-building and in the subjugation of nonwhite races by Europeans, Daniel O'Connor provides substantial evidence that genuine idealism also permeated their ranks. Though the book does go on for a bit about the author's postcolonial soul-searching about the Anglican Church's role in India and its "flock," as well as shoot off on a tangent regarding arcane (to the nonChristian South Asian reader, that is) liturgical debates and historical missionary personages, it is nevertheless a quiet-toned, modest and intriguing account of an intriguing time: beginning from the last days of the Nehruvian era through a wide circle of friends and long hours of classes to the dramatic eruption of the Naxalite movement. On the latter topic the book is fascinating to read, as it probes, with warm fellowship and sympathy, why some of the best minds of one of India's most prestigious educational institution left to 'join the revolution.' Though as a man of the cloth O'Connor clearly abjured violence, yet his humane sensibility, especially during a decade when liberation theology exerted intellectual influence, clearly empathized with incendiary social consciences. No wonder that even after most of the revolutionaries retreated into being 'ex-revolutionaries,' he kept contact with them.This is also an account of an entire family living, unfazed, cheerily, on very modest means, where every pice had to be calculated in an era of "food rationing, shortages and fluctuating prices." There is a lesson here for all of us. Some of the best passages in the book are also its most light-hearted, as in his portrayal of Nirad Chaudhuri, then living in Delhi, and which deserves, at least for Bengali readers, to be quoted at some length: "Another speaker was Nirad Chaudhuri--we got him to the SCM (Student Christian Movement at the college) twice, in 1966 and 1970. I met him first at the Brotherhood House, where he was a regular visitor and user of their library. He was working his way, when I first knew him, through the several volumes of Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp Lake's Beginnings of Christianity. It was at about this time, according to his Continent of Circe, that he used the rather specialized knowledge he had thus gained to score an exegetical point against Dr. Radhakrishnan (first president of India and professor of religion at Oxford). If that was all, it was a small gain to achieve from such a vast read, but he loved scoring points against almost anyone. From time to time, Nirad babu called on us, and I enjoyed visiting him and his wife, Amiya, at their home...They lived just within the Mori Darwaza, having the top apartment in a residential block known as P&O Building, named not after the shipping line but after the two sons, Percy and Oswald, of the Anglo-Indian owner of the property. High up in their flat, looking out over the city wall, he would watch for my coming on my scooter, my bald head flashing in the sunlight, he alleged, like a heliograph. Though we occasionally resorted to his roof garden to sit among the Japanese bonsai which he cultivated, we usually met in the room he called his salon, the air filled with his French quotations, and the walls lined with many books and a large, gilt-framed reproduction of the Rokeby Venus of Velasquez. On one of my visits, Nirad babu completed the improbable picture by sporting a white lace cravat and cuffs, gear that I have only otherwise seen worn, though equally improbably, by the moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland on ceremonial occasions..." Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.
|
Interesting Times in India: A Short Decade at St. Stephen's College by Daniel O'Connor; Delhi: Penguin India; 2005; 234 pp.; Rs. 295 |
