My students are in a dilemma. They want to screen Tamas to mark the birth centenary of Bhisham Sahni. But they have been told by the authorities that it is too long a film and therefore, it is not practical to give the hall for such a long duration. Students get the message: in these nationalist times it is not prudent to invite trouble by screening films like Tamas. But they have to remember Bhisham Sahni: Is it not his birth centenary this year? So, they are considering showing Mohan Joshi Hajir Ho! , a film in which Bhisham Sahni plays the role of a middle aged common man, who is battling with a faceless bureaucratic state.
One can say that through Mohan Joshi… they would be bringing to the fore a forgotten aspect of Bhisham Sahni: his association with the world of acting. It is true that Bhisham Sahni was seriously involved with theatre. He was an active member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association. However, while doing so, somewhere deep in our hearts we would be assailed by the truth: replacing Tamas with Mohan Joshi.. is an act of hiding the most significant part of Bisham Sahni, a disservice to the memory of the writer and his response to the times he lived in. When we remember him, we cannot obscure the most important aspect of his oeuvre and claim that we have understood him.
Tamas was written as a response to the communal violence of Bhiwandi in the early seventies of the last century. The deserted lanes of Bhiwandi suffocated by the ghostly silence took him back to the pre-partition days, when Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were killing each other. Days after his return from Bhiwandi, assailed by these memories he started writing Tamas.
It is strange that the votaries of Hindutva get upset by Tamas. Proponents of Islamic nationhood would similarly be vexed with him. The novel is not only about the politics of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh or Muslim League. It is about the vulnerability of human nature to hate. About how hate takes over otherwise "nice" and sensitive people. Shahnawaz, who has rescued and sheltered his friend Raghunath and his wife, is not free from anti-Hindu hate. It is Milkhi, the servant of Raghunath who falls victim to this hatred. His friendship with Raghunath is no assurance of empathy and kindness from him for other Hindus. So, when the leaders of communal parties flaunt their proximity with people from other religions or even when they choose their life partner from the enemy-religion, it does not cure them of their communal politics.
Capturing the uncertainty
Bhisham Sahni is a writer of the tentativeness of human life. Things never seem to settle down, there is no final point we can reach. As if life is always on tenterhooks. Bhisham Sahni was himself a refugee of sorts. A Rawalpindian to the core and a man full of Lahore, he did make Delhi his home like other Hindus and Sikhs who were forced out of the newly created Pakistan, but the feeling of displacement never left him.
The running theme of Bisham Sahni’s short stories and novels is an agonizing feeling of uprootedness. It makes his characters vulnerable and shaky. Despite this, Bhisham Sahni looked at life with kindness. His short stories depict the struggle of small people, housemaids, construction-workers, clerks, people from the lower middle class, all struggling to keep their head above water. But the stories are not all grim. In the seemingly cheerless world, even the poorest create their own philosophies of life.
Rita Kothari once asked, “From Plato to Bourdieu, the poor are a subject of philosophy, but do not they also have philosophy?” This is the question writers like Premchand, Nirala, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyaya, Renu have been raising. In his deceptively plain style, Bhisham Sahni, in his short story, Gango Ka Jaaya, asks, “Each ruin of Delhi has a saga of its own, but what would be the ruin of the hut of a labourer and what would be its story?”
Bhisham Sahni is not known as a stylist like his contemporary Nirmal Verma. Verma is known as the harbinger of a new wave in Hindi fiction. Bhisham Sahni confessed innocently that the labels or movements like Nai Kahani or Sachetan Kahani or Akahani hardly bothered him. Life was before him, inviting him to write it and he plunged himself into it. He told its story honestly, although often bemused with its vagaries and its inability to learn from itself. There is an extraordinary calmness in him. Was it because he had seen cruelty at its extreme and was acutely aware of the fallibility of human nature? The pre-partition violence in which Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs massacred and brutalised each other.
He knew that humanity is frail and once you allow hatred to take centre stage, it disables goodness for a very long time. It is not enough to say that forces of goodness need to be strong. Goodness is always weak when faced with evil. It is, therefore, important to have an ability to recognize it and keep warning people against it.
Artlessness in art
The greatest achievement of Bhisham Sahni is his use of language. He raised it to that height where art seems to lose its distinction from life. The art of artlessness is difficult to practice. Bhisham Sahni, like Premchand is a master of simplicity. He is an observer, a concerned one, though: he wants to tell his readers, like Nehru, that each one of us has an element of divinity within and we must learn to approach life with patience and care.
Bhisham Sahni was shaped by numerous influences. Apart from the Arya Samaj, Congress Party, Gandhi, Marxism and the Communist Party, his elder brother Balraj Sahni also had great impact on him. He belonged to an era of the sublime. People, ordinary people were struggling to transcend their limits. But more than these his world of fiction seems to have formed him. Despite being associated with IPTA and serving the Progressive Writers’ Association as its general secretary, he refused to fall into the trap of polemics. He knew that polemics might give you a false sense of power but it is an endless game. You may demolish your opponent but would never be able to establish a human relationship. All he wanted was understanding. The Kabir in his play Kabira Khada Bazar Mein stands up against power with the strength of compassion.
Tamas, like all other works by him tells us that human civilization is always afflicted by barbarity. Also, it is an unequal fight, because humanity tries to understand its other whereas evil does not suffer from such compulsion. Humanity, thus, fights with its hands tied.
It is only just that we are re-reading him in times when violence is working insidiously to permanently corrode our collective self. It is a test for his works as well as for his readers. Does he still say something meaningful to us and do we retain our ability to hear him?
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One can say that through Mohan Joshi… they would be bringing to the fore a forgotten aspect of Bhisham Sahni: his association with the world of acting. It is true that Bhisham Sahni was seriously involved with theatre. He was an active member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association. However, while doing so, somewhere deep in our hearts we would be assailed by the truth: replacing Tamas with Mohan Joshi.. is an act of hiding the most significant part of Bisham Sahni, a disservice to the memory of the writer and his response to the times he lived in. When we remember him, we cannot obscure the most important aspect of his oeuvre and claim that we have understood him.
Tamas was written as a response to the communal violence of Bhiwandi in the early seventies of the last century. The deserted lanes of Bhiwandi suffocated by the ghostly silence took him back to the pre-partition days, when Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were killing each other. Days after his return from Bhiwandi, assailed by these memories he started writing Tamas.
It is strange that the votaries of Hindutva get upset by Tamas. Proponents of Islamic nationhood would similarly be vexed with him. The novel is not only about the politics of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh or Muslim League. It is about the vulnerability of human nature to hate. About how hate takes over otherwise "nice" and sensitive people. Shahnawaz, who has rescued and sheltered his friend Raghunath and his wife, is not free from anti-Hindu hate. It is Milkhi, the servant of Raghunath who falls victim to this hatred. His friendship with Raghunath is no assurance of empathy and kindness from him for other Hindus. So, when the leaders of communal parties flaunt their proximity with people from other religions or even when they choose their life partner from the enemy-religion, it does not cure them of their communal politics.
Capturing the uncertainty
Bhisham Sahni is a writer of the tentativeness of human life. Things never seem to settle down, there is no final point we can reach. As if life is always on tenterhooks. Bhisham Sahni was himself a refugee of sorts. A Rawalpindian to the core and a man full of Lahore, he did make Delhi his home like other Hindus and Sikhs who were forced out of the newly created Pakistan, but the feeling of displacement never left him.
The running theme of Bisham Sahni’s short stories and novels is an agonizing feeling of uprootedness. It makes his characters vulnerable and shaky. Despite this, Bhisham Sahni looked at life with kindness. His short stories depict the struggle of small people, housemaids, construction-workers, clerks, people from the lower middle class, all struggling to keep their head above water. But the stories are not all grim. In the seemingly cheerless world, even the poorest create their own philosophies of life.
Rita Kothari once asked, “From Plato to Bourdieu, the poor are a subject of philosophy, but do not they also have philosophy?” This is the question writers like Premchand, Nirala, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyaya, Renu have been raising. In his deceptively plain style, Bhisham Sahni, in his short story, Gango Ka Jaaya, asks, “Each ruin of Delhi has a saga of its own, but what would be the ruin of the hut of a labourer and what would be its story?”
Bhisham Sahni is not known as a stylist like his contemporary Nirmal Verma. Verma is known as the harbinger of a new wave in Hindi fiction. Bhisham Sahni confessed innocently that the labels or movements like Nai Kahani or Sachetan Kahani or Akahani hardly bothered him. Life was before him, inviting him to write it and he plunged himself into it. He told its story honestly, although often bemused with its vagaries and its inability to learn from itself. There is an extraordinary calmness in him. Was it because he had seen cruelty at its extreme and was acutely aware of the fallibility of human nature? The pre-partition violence in which Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs massacred and brutalised each other.
He knew that humanity is frail and once you allow hatred to take centre stage, it disables goodness for a very long time. It is not enough to say that forces of goodness need to be strong. Goodness is always weak when faced with evil. It is, therefore, important to have an ability to recognize it and keep warning people against it.
Artlessness in art
The greatest achievement of Bhisham Sahni is his use of language. He raised it to that height where art seems to lose its distinction from life. The art of artlessness is difficult to practice. Bhisham Sahni, like Premchand is a master of simplicity. He is an observer, a concerned one, though: he wants to tell his readers, like Nehru, that each one of us has an element of divinity within and we must learn to approach life with patience and care.
Bhisham Sahni was shaped by numerous influences. Apart from the Arya Samaj, Congress Party, Gandhi, Marxism and the Communist Party, his elder brother Balraj Sahni also had great impact on him. He belonged to an era of the sublime. People, ordinary people were struggling to transcend their limits. But more than these his world of fiction seems to have formed him. Despite being associated with IPTA and serving the Progressive Writers’ Association as its general secretary, he refused to fall into the trap of polemics. He knew that polemics might give you a false sense of power but it is an endless game. You may demolish your opponent but would never be able to establish a human relationship. All he wanted was understanding. The Kabir in his play Kabira Khada Bazar Mein stands up against power with the strength of compassion.
Tamas, like all other works by him tells us that human civilization is always afflicted by barbarity. Also, it is an unequal fight, because humanity tries to understand its other whereas evil does not suffer from such compulsion. Humanity, thus, fights with its hands tied.
It is only just that we are re-reading him in times when violence is working insidiously to permanently corrode our collective self. It is a test for his works as well as for his readers. Does he still say something meaningful to us and do we retain our ability to hear him?