The 1981 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

BIOGRAPHY of Gour Kishore Ghosh

During his youth, GOUR KISHORE GHOSH remembers, "we were almost like a family of nomads." The eldest and only son of six children of Girija Bhusan Ghosh and Sadhana Mazumder, GHOSH was born on June 20, 1923 in Hat Gopalpur, the home village of his mother in Jhenida subdivision in the Jessore district of what was then East Bengal, India, and is now Bangladesh. His father, who came from a neighboring village, had taken medical training in Calcutta and was practicing as a doctor in the area. The wandering began when GHOSH was five and his father suddenly accepted a job in Sylhet as the doctor on a tea plantation.

"At that time for a Hindu family to go to an unknown place was almost like a sin," GHOSH explains, and "Sylhet then was very remote. You had to travel by bullock cart, then rail carriage, then steamboat. After that nobody knew; it was beyond comprehension. And in the rail carriage you would not know who would travel with you—maybe some Muslims, maybe some Christians. So the attitude was, don't go. Your village was the world."

GHOSH began his education in Sylhet in a one-man school and credits his strict schoolmaster, Nabin Pal, with teaching him to write Bengali properly. Although his father became manager of the tea garden within three years, he abruptly left his secure job to undertake a private development project. He had observed that people were poor on the marshy side of Sylhet where a grass grew from which fine mats could be made, and he decided to introduce them to mat-making.

Living in the single room his father rented in the village on the marsh land, GHOSH, his mother and sister frequently fell ill with malaria. Unmindful of the family's health or comfort, the father persisted for one year in trying to teach the village folk to weave mats and market them. When all the money he had saved during his four years on the tea estate had been spent, he took the family back to Jhenida where he resumed medical practice.

For the next two and a half years GHOSH recalls living in several places and changing schools four or five times. In 1933 a dispute over their small ancestral properties arose between his father and his father's younger brother who was living with them. Impatient with the quarrel, his father gave his share to his brother and abruptly moved his family (to which two more daughters had been born) to Nabadwip, about 40 miles north of Calcutta, where he started medical practice anew. From then until GHOSH’s graduation from high school there was no further change of residence. But the family was now faced with a different hardship.

Nabadwip is hallowed as the birthplace of Shri Chaitanya, considered, GHOSH explains, to be a reincarnation of Lord Krishna, who taught a simple form of Hinduism based on love. Since to die here assured the believer eternal blessings, many old people were brought to this place by their relatives and abandoned. The GHOSH family had not been long in Nabadwip before the father brought one of these deserted old women—with body sores and swollen feet—to their home. He ordered his children to treat her like their grandmother, to clean her and care for her, and forbade any argument from his wife. In their two-room house with a verandah the family shared their beds with a succession of five such "grandmothers and grandfathers." GHOSH bears the scars of infections he contracted from them. His father also ordered him to help carry the dead, not only from their house, but from the streets, to the funeral pyres.

His father earned enough to pay tuition for GHOSH to attend Nabadwip Bakultala High English School where he began to study English. There one of the turning points in his life occurred. While in Class 7 he won first prize "for writing an essay, or for my recitation or elocution"—and was given an English book which he could not understand. As he was walking home a young gentleman noticed his tearstained face and called to him, "Here boy, why are you crying?" Between sobs GHOSH told him that he had gotten a "bogus" book as a prize. "But this is Treasure Island," the stranger exclaimed, "you have been presented with a very good book!" The young man, Gouri Prasad Basu, who had just graduated from the David Hare Teachers' Training College, translated the foreword to GHOSH, read aloud the first two pages and told him to come and tell him the story when he had finished reading it. As Basu promised, Treasure Island opened up new vistas to the village-bred youth, GHOSH remembers him fondly as one of his mentors and when he received news of his Ramon Magsaysay Award he wrote Basu.

GHOSH also remembers gratefully the public library in Nabadwip where, after his experience with Basu, he spent his spare time reading. "I had no special choice or favorite," he remarks, "because Basu taught me that if you try you can understand anything you want to."

Sudden changes of residence, sharp fluctuations in their economic situation and his father's concern for the destitute sharpened GHOSH’s social awareness at an early age. He was thus alert to the sociopolitical discussions among his classmates and teachers, who were influenced by anti-British activists who had studied Marxism in jail after their Chittagong Armory Raid in 1931 and the Marxist-oriented students returning from English universities. In 1938, at the age of 15, he joined the student wing of the Communist Party ot India (CPI) which was then banned by the British Government of India. He organized one strike, his first taste of defying authority.

GHOSH remembers that party members were torn by a conflict between the Moscow-dictated line the CPI was following during 19391941 (that World War II was an imperialist war and Britain should not be helped) and the deviationist position of Manabendra Nath Roy (that it was an anti-fascist war and India must join with Britain). For taking this stand M. N. Roy was vilified and branded a British agent by the CPI. GHOSH’s own rejection of "hollow-thinking communists" occurred after Hitler's forces invaded Poland in August 1939. Shortly thereafter the student group to which he belonged left the CPI and joined Roy's "more rational" League of Radical Congressmen which in 1940 became the Radical Democratic Party. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 the CPI reversed itself and called for all-out aid for the Allies, including Britain.

By 1941 the number of destitutes in the small family home in Nabadwip had become unmanageable and GHOSH’s father rented another house for them. From this grew his idea of greater service to the community by establishing a permanent home for deserted people. GHOSH was 18 and had just completed high school when his father went his separate way, leaving GHOSH to care for his mother and four younger sisters; his eldest sister had married at 16 and lived elsewhere. GHOSH’s father now runs an orphanage and maintains occasional contact with the family with the detachment of a stranger.

Among the boys taking their matriculation examination in 1941, GHOSH was one of the very few to qualify for Division I and he was offered tuition scholarships by two Calcutta colleges. He went to Calcutta intending to study and work part-time, but when neither college could guarantee him a place in their hostels, he had to forego both offers.

With only a high school education, no special skill and his mother and sisters in Nabadwip to support, GHOSH took the first job he could find in Calcutta—as an electrician's mate. The work was not steady and paid only four annas (16 annas in one rupee) a day. After four months he found regular work as an apprentice viseman fitter with a small company which paid ten annas a day. From this wage he sent six annas to his mother and lived on the remaining four. He saved by eating at a Muslim restaurant for the poor where he was allowed to sleep in a corner, for which favor he helped with odd work. When asked why as a Hindu he did not choose a co-religionist's establishment he replied, "because Hindus would ask why I was there, what my caste was and so on, but the Muslims never asked anything; they were more human."

He left after nine months as a viseman fitter and took several odd jobs before finding one paying the generous salary of Rs.35 a month as a mate in the rescue service of an Air Raid Precaution unit which had been organized after Japanese planes twice raided Calcutta in late 1941 and early 1942. He had not been on this job long before he was injured while his team was using a pulley to rescue a heavy man from a three story building. "There was some slip," GHOSH remembers, "so I took the rope around my chest, lay down and held the rope as tightly as I could." He checked the man's fall, but the strong jerk on the rope caused such pressure on his chest that he fainted. He developed pleurisy and was hospitalized for one month. Although his hospital expenses were paid by the government, he lost his job because he could no longer do strenuous work.

Returning to Nabadwip to live with his family during his convalescence, the young man did private tutoring and worked as a petty contractor for a timber merchant. "That was a very bad time," GHOSH recalls, "the war was on and clothing, foodstuffs, everything, was in short supply. But we managed some way or another on my irregular income."

As soon as he was well enough GHOSH went to his ancestral district of Jessore to seek work and was hired as a road sirkar (foreman) for a construction firm building a large airdrome. He lost that good job after three months when the police discovered he was a member of the Radical Democratic Party, held him in custody for 15 days, and expelled him from the restricted military area. He returned to Nabadwip. Ironically, GHOSH says, at the same time party members were being arrested on the order of British Intelligence, they were being branded by Indian nationalists and the communists as British stooges.

With the help of his maternal uncle GHOSH was admitted to the Intermediate Science Class of the wartime Nabadwip branch of Vidyasagar College of Calcutta. He disliked the class atmosphere and soon stopped attending courses, but remained active in student politics and helped form the Radical Students League. Between the years 1943 and 1945 he worked at any job he could get, no matter how temporary, because he had to support his mother and sisters. Again he tutored and cut lumber in Nabadwip. In Calcutta he worked briefly as a dishwasher in a restaurant and later as an agent selling pharmaceuticals, buckets, cardboard and insurance on a commission. He next managed a touring troupe of Kathak dancers, interpreting the Kathak dances of north India to Bengali audiences, arranging travel and housing for the troupe and selling tickets for the performances. His first poem was published in 1943 in Purbasha (The East Horizon), a Calcutta periodical, and in 1944 and 1945 he contributed occasional personal articles to his party organ, Janata (The Masses).

Early in 1945, at the main campus of Vidyasagar College in Calcutta, he "bullied the teacher," as he puts it, into allowing him to sit for the Intermediate Examination in Science and scored the minimum percentage for an undergraduate pass. GHOSH readily volunteers that his academic performance "was not good enough," but says, with a droll sidelong glance, "that was the arrangement because my teacher thought it would be rather troublesome to keep me in the class."

GHOSH was returning to Calcutta from Nabadwip in 1945 when his train stopped 15 miles outside the city and everyone in his compartment began leaving. On hearing that there were vacancies in an aircraft factory and that jobs were plentiful, he too left the train and joined the long queue of job seekers. He obtained work as a vise fitter in the wing shop and within six months his salary rose from Rs.1/7as. a day to Rs.3/l0as. "That was a lot of money in those days," GHOSH says, "but again my dossier caught up with me and the Indian police took me away because they thought I was there to engage in subversive activity."

He returned to Calcutta, joined the Indian Federation of Labor and was drafted by the Radical Democratic Party to go with a cadre to organize jute workers in the industrial area of Barrackpore. During his five months there he was severely beaten by communist workers for speaking out against their platform and their candidate.

With the end of the war in August 1945 trade union activity increased and GHOSH was assigned in early 1946 to organize the Lalmanir Hat branch of the Bengal and Assam Railwaymen's Association. When the police evicted him from Lalmanir Hat, which was under British rule, he crossed the nearby border into Cooch Behar, then one of the princely states ruled by a maharaja. While the Lalmanir Hat police were going through the procedures required to request the maharaja's police to evict him, "I was just going back and forth across the border and doing my job," GHOSH relates. "For five months I played this game."

He was next sent to Darjeeling to bring into the party fold the organizer of the workers on the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway. He later reamed that the union wanted to factionalize the workers and was working with the company to oust the organizer. The union accomplished this by giving him a pompous title in the overall organization, whereby he lost control of his home group. The organizer whom GHOSH was ostensibly sent to help proved to be "a very good, tough man and a born organizer," and became his friend. "The net result of this experience," GHOSH relates, "is a story, named for the organizer Sagina Mahato, which tells how a Marxist organization destroys a natural labor organizer. No personalities can be tolerated. Never! Instead I had to set up a faceless organization. I wrote seriously about this tragedy of his. Before that I was writing shallow things and nobody was really paying attention. "

Meanwhile M. N. Roy had been reexamining the theoretical aspects of political practice and evolved the philosophy of "New Humanism," to which GHOSH subscribed. The Radical Democratic Party was not formally disbanded until 1948 but members like GHOSH gave up party politics as much as two years earlier.

GHOSH’s introduction to journalism came in early 1947 in Calcutta when he became a proofreader on a new weekly literary magazine Nababani (New Message), which survived for only one year. Thereafter he found work as a petty clerk in the land customs clearing office which had been created to handle traffic across the new border between West Bengal, India, and East Bengal, Pakistan. From his salary of Rs.30 per month he sent Rs.20 to his mother and on the remainder "could not rent even a bed in Calcutta." Rescue came from a fellow "radical humanist," Samaren Roy, who let him sleep in the room where Roy was printing his weekly political magazine Arani (name of the wood used to spark a fire by rubbing two sticks together). GHOSH met Roy once a week on Saturday when the magazine was published and Roy prepared for the next issue. On one such Saturday Roy was short of articles and offered GHOSH "a double omelet and two slices of toast" if he would write a little satire for the magazine. GHOSH told Roy to order the meal and started writing. From that time on, although he was still working at customs, he was regularly writing short satires for the magazine, sometimes doing a little proofreading to help out, and working on his own first book. Arani, however, never broke even and closed in mid 1948.

Samaren Roy's young friend P. K. Roy had observed GHOSH’s work and liked it well enough to offer him the job of proofreader with the daily paper he was about to publish. Named Satyayug for the earliest and most righteous of the four ages of the Hindu world cycle, it was owned by the country's largest newspaper chain, the Times of India group. After a short time as proofreader GHOSH was given charge of the children's and cinema pages. He published a few of his own short stories for children, and in 1949 his first book, Ei Kolkatai (In this Calcutta), was serialized in the Sunday edition. This autobiographical satire "gave me some prominence as a writer," GHOSH reports. It was published in book forte in 1950, followed by his second book, Meghnamati (the name of a legendary girl), a collection of fairy tales, in 1951.

After the owners closed Satyayug in 1951 GHOSH was unemployed for about a year, during which time he concentrated on his writing for which he had one steady outlet. In 1950, at the initiative of Sagammoy Ghosh, the editor of Calcutta's most popular literary weekly Desh (Country), GHOSH had begun contributing to Desh a regular column entitled "Rupadarshir Naksha" (Sketches by Rupadarshi, his pen name); it ran until 1953. Rupa has two meanings—beauty and image—end darshi means he who sees, hence rupadarshi is one who sees beauty or any image. GHOSH’s Rupadarshi wrote "about common folks seen every day but not noticed." His intent was to make people aware that there is beauty in everyone if only they adopt a more humanist viewpoint. A second series of sketches of ordinary people was compiled as his third book, Circus (the English word has been incorporated into Bengali with the same meaning), and published in 1952.

GHOSH believes Calcutta's largest Bengali-language daily, Ananda Bazar Patrika, hired him as a junior reporter in 1952 because his friend Amitabha Chowdhury had declined their offer. Chowdhury was a respected reporter on Jugantar, the second largest Bengali newspaper (and in 1961 the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Joumalism and Literature "for scrupulous and probing investigative reporting in protection of individual rights and community interests"). GHOSH’s Ei Kolkatai had attracted the attention of the paper's publisher which made him the second choice although he had had little experience as a reporter. While working for the newspaper GHOSH continued contributing to Desh.

Publication in the latter of six stories he wrote between 1952 and 1954 about Sagina Mahato and five other political personalities he had met added another dimension to his reputation as a penetrating social critic. The series was published in book form in 1956 under the title of the lead story, Sagina Mahato.

In 1958 GHOSH and Chowdhury decided to start, on the side, an independent news weekly wherein they could express their opinions without the inhibitions imposed by their respective commercial newspapers. "How did we do it?" GHOSH asks rhetorically. "That is a wonderment! I don't know how Amit [Chowdhury] persuaded prominent journalists from almost all the papers to join us and put in share money to start Darpan [The Mirror]." Chowdhury also urged GHOSH to write a satirical column for Darpan which he entitled "Hing Ting Chhat" (freely translated as "fee, fie, foh, fum"). For this column GHOSH took the pen name Goudananda Kavi (Poet Laureate of Bengal; Gouda is the ancient name of Bengal), as a parody of the Bengali self-image of being first and best in everything. GHOSH stayed with Darpan for 18 months and Chowdhury a year or so longer. "It is still being published but long ago this paper branded Amit and me as CIA agents," GHOSH reports with a sardonic smile at the use of the "patently false and shopworn label."

After he withdrew from Darpan GHOSH published his popular column under the title "Goudananda Kavi Bhane" (Thus Spake the Poet Laureate of Bengal) as an occasional feature in Ananda Bazar Patrika. In the early 1970s it became a regular weekly column and in 1974 a collection of these columns was published in book form.

From 1953 through mid-1975 GHOSH chronicled the deterioration of law and order in India, and "the growing lack of simple brotherhood," in his Goudananda column, in feature articles, short stories and in books. His second column for Desh, "Rupadarshir Sangbad Bhashya" (News Commentary by Rupadarshi)—a revival of his earlier Rupadarshi column—ran from 1968 to 1971. Desh never hesitated to print GHOSH's biting political commentaries although his paper, Ananda Bazar Patrika, at times refused to do so. GHOSH himself was not daunted by the risk of calling powerful and dangerous elements to account, even though in 1953 he had been assaulted by the police for his criticism of their methods of suppressing political movements.

GHOSH dismisses all but a few of the books he wrote between 1954 and 1964—more than 20 novels, collections of satires and short stories, and children's books—with his remark that "many have long been out of print and even I have forgotten the titles." He, however, remembers with delight Brajadar Gulpa Samagra (Absurd Stories of Brajada), which is a collection of satires on the inflated ego of the Bengalis. Not wanting to use the adjective "absurd" in the title he distorted galpa, meaning story, to gulpa, to imply absurdity. Brajada is a pompous, typical Bengali gentleman who "excels" in everything, believing

that "Bengalis are the best dressers in the world and Bengalis can do anything; I punctured him in an hilarious way," GHOSH recounts with an impish gleam. The Brajada tales have sold well and one has been made into a popular film.

In 1965 he wrote Lokta (That Nonperson), a novelette which, in the words of a colleague, "portrayed in graphic detail the social tension which had begun to reduce individuals to nonpersons." A condensed version in English was published in the Australian periodical Quadrant the same year. Sequels written between 1967 and 1969 were Bagh Bandi (Game of Checkers) and Taliye Jabar Aage (Just Before We Go Down) and "depicted the seeds of internal decay, the inevitable growth of violent minority movements and urban guerrilla action and the resulting counterforce of cruel government suppression." The same colleague ranks Bagh Bandi as "a modern classic for its human insight into a group of young urban terrorists of whose policies GHOSH strongly disapproved but for whose misdirections he suffered immense grief." The two stories, he continues, "comprise a treatise on contemporary history in extraordinarily sympathetic terms." GHOSH emphasizes that these stories were written before the Naxalite (terrorist) outbreak but adds, "if you read them you will understand why a boy became a Naxalite." Because of their relevance they were republished in a book entitled Amra Jekhane (Where We Are) in 1970 when the Naxalites were at the height of their power. While recognizing the phenomenon as an excess of Bengali emotionalism with historic precedents GHOSH deeply regrets that educated young people should see no other way to express protest.

GHOSH believes that there has always been a greater appeal in Bengal for terroristic activities than elsewhere in India. He points out that in West Bengal the Communist Party of India (CPI) resorted to violence from the very beginning. When the CPI split, the new Communist Party of India (Marxist) became the more extreme organization, and when it later divided the followers of "the more terroristic Maoist oriented offshoot, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist)" became known as the Naxalites, because they began their activities in the northern Bengali town of Naxal Bari.

On two occasions Marxist leaders took strong exception to GHOSH's writing. In 1967 his Gariahat Bridger upar Theke Dujane (Those Two on Top of Gariahat Bridge), a satirical novelette on Marx and Mao Tsetung, brought an attack on the Ananda Bazar Patrika editorial offices by CPI (M) supporters. While they broke windowpanes and threatened to "smash the black hands of G. K. GHOSH," GHOSH, who had come in behind them, quietly listened to the loud accusations and then stepped aside, unrecognized in his simple dress, as they filed out. In 1969, after his mercilessly satirical, carefully documented exposure of the land accumulated by CPI (M-L) Chairman Charu Mazumdar, who had touted himself as the protector of India's landless peasant, he was surrounded and threatened by Marxist activists in a Calcutta alley.

GHOSH’s literary battle with this latest breed of thugs came to a head on July 4, 1970 when he received a letter signed by the CPI (M-L) District Committee sentencing him to death within one month. He was accused of writing sarcastic and derogatory pieces about Marxism-Leninism and about the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung, using his pen name Rupadarshi; of writing sexy novels under his own name; of trying to misguide the younger generation of Bengal by preaching Gandhism, "which is but another name for fascism, a philosophy of the Indian reactionaries"; and in his personal life being "a vile, lecherous individual." A postscript added that his case "may be considered" if he apologized.

The accusations, which were a familiar ploy of the leftists to embarrass their critics, were dismissible. But the failure of his threateners to distinguish between sarcasm and satire prompted GHOSH to publish both the letter and his reply in which he resorted to sarcasm "for the first and only time" in his life. "To my incognito executioner," he wrote, " . . . . Death is one's natural end . . . . To be tormented by self-reproach for having done something against one's conscience is the only thing that I deem as punishment or penalty." His closing riposte was the quotation of a noble dialogue from the Indian classic, the Mahabharata: "Who is man? The sound of virtuous deeds touches the heaven and the earth. As long as that sound vibrates, he (the doer of virtuous deeds) is recognized as a man."

GHOSH continued to expose the excesses and fallacies of the Naxalites and the death-threat deadline passed without incident. Later he lashed out at the police for torturing the young terrorists and defended their right to due process of law.

GHOSH was being consistent with his principles. "I am anti-communist and I am anti-fascist," he declared, "because in both political systems the fundamental rights of man are trampled underfoot . . . . I consider it the moral duty of every democrat to protest strongly if in the democratic system, too, the policeman or anyone else dares to trample upon the fundamental rights of man."

After the Naxalites had been quelled in 1971 there was a comparative lull. A collection of GHOSH’s columns published under the title he had used for his Darpan column, Hing, Ting, Chhat, was published in 1973. In that same year a new element in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Congress party emerged—Congress I (Indira) Youth—who were "as dangerous and violent as the Naxalites," GHOSH reports; "both of them were extremists, barbarians."

In 1974 GHOSH introduced in Desh a new column, "Rupadarshir Socchaar Chintaa" (Thinking Aloud by Rupadarshi) which until mid-1975 was one of his chief forums for comment on political happenings. The same year Jayaprakash Narayan (1965 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Public Service for "constructive articulation of a public conscience") became concerned about developments and emerged from his self-imposed political exile. After visiting Calcutta and other localities to assess opinions, he called for a united opposition to the repressive actions of the ruling party. GHOSH supported Narayan's cause but opposed enlisting the help of Marxists. He and others tried to persuade Narayan not to resort to political agitation until a groundwork had been laid. "We felt," GHOSH explains, "that unless real democrats were rallied, the movement would fail."

After three talks with Narayan GHOSH expressed his objections in two articles in Desh. His argument was that "at any cost we have to maintain law and order" and he appealed to the opposition leaders "not to set foot in the trap the government was laying."

Narayan's call to oppose the government produced satyagrahas, non-violent demonstrations in the Gandhian tradition, by a mixed group of protesters. The demonstrations were put down by the police with tactics as harsh as those they had used against the Naxalites. And GHOSH’s warning that "Mrs. Gandhi . . . was preparing to jump, on the plea that order was being disturbed," proved to be prophetic.

GHOSH now found himself in direct conflict with a new adversary—the central government—when on June 25, 1975 Prime Minister Gandhi declared a State of Emergency "due to internal threats to security." He responded eloquently to this suspension of civil liberties, with both straightforward criticism and pointed satire. On June 30 his columns in Desh and Ananda Bazar Patrika were cancelled. He thereupon sent in another article which was disallowed by the principal officer of the Board of Censors himself, leaving no doubt that his voice had been stopped.

GHOSH reacted sharply. Marking the "death of his freedom to speak out" with a traditional Hindu act of bereavement, he shaved off his curly black hair, but "to achieve maximum propaganda effect" he kept his full mustache, and walked through the streets drawing passersby into his loss. Within seven days "they put a tail on me," GHOSH says.

Meanwhile Jyotirmoy Datta, the young poet-editor of the Bengali literary monthly Kolkata (Calcutta) came to see him about publishing a protest. When GHOSH was convinced that Datta had seriously faced the probable consequences, he helped him plan and produce a special political edition of his magazine which was not submitted to the censors. For this edition GHOSH contributed his two censored articles, wrote one more and, most importantly, addressed a symbolic letter to his 13 year old son. In this letter GHOSH stated his dilemma: "If I recognize as the supreme end of my life the task of providing you all with a secure shelter . . . the question of my taking the risk of registering my protest does not arise .... But then I have to ... make a compromise with untruth .... to sell my honor as a writer .... I have to stifle in me the urge for asserting myself as a man." A printer willing to print uncensored copy was finally found and in August 900 copies of the special edition of Kolkata were on the newsstands.

GHOSH remained under surveillance but moved freely until the early hours of October 6 when his home was raided, a copy of the offending issue of the magazine was found and he was arrested without charge on the orders of the Chief Minister of West Bengal, who had been a personal friend. On the evening of that day the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was inveighed to place him in solitary confinement in Presidency Jail, Cell No. 10. Kolkata was proscribed and Datta went underground, publishing an abbreviated English version of the proscribed material before he too was arrested eight months later.

Translations of GHOSH’s "Letter from a Father" were published in Marathi in Sadhana, and in Gujarati in Bhumiputra. These issues were also confiscated and Bhumiputra had to pay a fine of Rs.25,000, but the two magazines fought and won their cases for free speech in the Bombay and Gujarat high courts respectively. The "Letter" was a symbol of resistance to denial of freedom. GHOSH, however, is quick to emphasize that he was not alone: "The same thing was being done by other people all over India during the period of the emergency."

In his 8x8 foot solitary prison cell—a space he "paced many times a day"—GHOSH was allowed to have his books, paper and pencil, but he had to show the guards everything he wrote. In the mornings between seven and eight the prisoners were taken around the yard for half an hour of exercise, allowed to use the toilet facilities and bathe.

The rest of the time they were behind bars. GHOSH’s cell, adjacent to a concrete water tank, was dank and in December very cold.

GHOSH knew that under MISA he could not challenge the validity of his detention, but he could challenge his registration as a second class prisoner, i.e. convict or political prisoner. This he did through his wife Shila (whom he had married in 1956) and won reclassification as a civil prisoner, which meant that the costs of his imprisonment were borne by the government and he did not have to wear prison uniform. The cell and the food remained the same.

At first he was allowed a visit, once a week for half an hour, by his wife and one of their three children. He instructed his wife to insist that she and the children be searched and a record made of everything found on their persons. Thus he was assured that no member of his family could be accused of smuggling out the writing he was scheming to do.

His allies were people in the jail who became his friends. One in particular, GHOSH says, "was not only a sweet man but also clever and intelligent. He supplied me with all the materials I needed and put my writings in the hands of the proper person. I don't know how he did it."

GHOSH successfully smuggled out his "Open Letter to the Prime Minister" which was circulated in Calcutta on December 1, and a second letter addressed to his countrymen, "Not Slavery, Not Servitude but Freedom," distributed on Republic Day January 26, 1976, at the large gathering on the parade ground in Calcutta where Prime Minister Gandhi was speaking. These two letters also were translated into most regional Indian languages and widely read.

After his December letter from prison reached the public "there was a terrific row," GHOSH remembers. The harassed warden, unable to identify GHOSH’s prison confederate, punished him by suspending his wife's visits. He was able to write only the one more letter in January before he became so ill from the dampness and chill in his cell that he could not move his fingers.

GHOSH had suffered a heart attack in 1971 - "it was light and I ignored all of the advice the doctors gave," he says—and a second "pretty bad" one in 1972 stemming from a myocardial infarction. In February in his cell he was struck by a third and more serious attack, this time angina. Taken that night to Seth Suklal Karnani Memorial Hospital, he was kept there for treatment and convalescence for four and a half months. After two weeks his wife was allowed to visit him, and as his health improved his puckish nature reasserted itself. "I got good doctoring and I calculated the cost," he said; "for my treatment, my food and my medical benefits, my government spent a little over Rs.7,000. For my guards it spent Rs.80,000—eight guards in 24 hours in three shifts! This is the way you 'economize' in an authoritarian regime." From his sickbed he smuggled out a satirical poem, "Epitaph for a Certain Giraffe," likening himself in his hospital confinement to a giraffe, fed tenderly while penned in a zoo.

In July GHOSH was returned to an 8x8 foot solitary cell, located this time on the upper floor of a two-story jail within Presidency Jail and with its own locked enclosure. The cell doors were opened each morning for one hour and the nine inmates in the inner jail could gather in the small yard. GHOSH, however, did not enjoy this privilege because the others were "boring CPI-M people." Except for the bad cell conditions he preferred his earlier location where he associated with "Naxalite boys" who admitted to him that their death threat had been written only to frighten and embarrass him.

After four months in the second cell GHOSH was released (September 26, 1976) on grounds of ill health. He began the next day to write editorials for Ananda Bazar Patrika and in early 1977 was made an associate editor. Although the emergency ended in March 1977, GHOSH feared the renewed freedom was superficial. He had hoped that in the 19 months of authoritarian rule, educated Indians would have learned to strengthen and protect the democracy they had lost, and that the uneducated would have come to appreciate what democracy had offered. "But this did not happen . . . . the basic attitude of educated and uneducated alike was apathy to any form of government," he ruefully observed. Yet his own deep faith in man, he says, has been and remains his inspiration.

GHOSH is a confirmed humanist. "I have tried to reach all three Hindu gods—Vishnu the administrator, Brahma the creator and Siva the destroyer and renewer—and even the Muslim and Christian god," he says, "but I have found, in my experience, that all of them failed to deliver justice to mankind. We have seen riots and killing in the name of all these religions. So I have come to the conclusion that men must build their history by themselves. My religion is man."

In reaching this faith in humanity his first guide was Gouri Prasad Basu, the young teacher who opened the outside world to him through books when he was a boy. M. N. Roy was his political pilot from communism to New Humanism. Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet-philosopher, and Mahatma Gandhi, who fought for freedom and whose faith in the common man was all embracing, have been his intellectual mentors.

GHOSH's humanism pervades all of his writings. In the preface to his book Amake Bolte Dao (Let Me Have My Say), published in 1977, he writes that his title is the perennial cry of the human soul: "Language is at once the creator and carrier of knowledge. It is man's only aid in his eternal quest for truth. It is for this reason that the freedom of speech and expression is as important for man as his right to live as a human being. That at least is my view." The book, which opens with the satirical poem written from his hospital bed and closes with his three famous letters, includes a selection of articles published in Desh and the quarterly literary journal Samatata (the ancient name for lower Bengal) between 1970 and 1975. An English translation of 17 of the 44 articles contained in Amake Bolte Dao was published in 1978. A collection of GHOSH’s columns from Desh was also published in book form in 1978 under the title Rupadarshir Sangbad Bhashya (News Commentary by Rupadarshi).

Aside from the politically inspired extremism which has wracked West Bengal, an underlying and unresolved cause of anguish to GHOSH and to the state has been the continuing communal strife. "In the partition that accompanied Indian independence," GHOSH points out, "Punjab and Bengal were the only two states divided. The transferrral of non-Muslims to the eastern Punjab (India) and of Muslims to the west (Pakistan) was virtually complete; the communal problem in the Punjab ended in 1947. But in Bengal many people on both sides just refused to leave their homes, thereby causing new kinds of trouble . . . . Pakistan was created absolutely for the Muslims, but even now, long after partition, of the population of some 54 million in West Bengal, India, at least 10 million are Muslims; of the population of about 90 million in East Bengal—Pakistan, now Bangladesh—I think more than 12 million are Hindus."

The theme of GHOSH’s only serious novels, a trilogy, is the circumstances that led to this "tragedy of partition." Jal Pade, Pata Nade (Rain Drops, Leaves Quiver), published in 1958, was written against the background of Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal from 1922 to 1925. It sets the stage and introduces the protagonists. The second, Prem Nei (There Is No Love), serialized in Desh and published in 1981, takes place between 1935 and 1937 when the British Government of India extended the voting franchise. All of the major characters are Muslims "because the Muslims constituted a majority of the population of Bengal and for the first time they got a taste of power by virtue of their larger vote . . . . The currents and crosscurrents of Muslim politics is my subject," he explains. The third novel, which he is now completing, Pratibeshi (The Neighbors), takes place during the 10 days of August 1946 that culminated in "the Great Calcutta Killing" which made inevitable the partition of India and division of Bengal. GOSH believes that:

"If there is a sinner for partition of the country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah is not the only one. Not Mountbatten [Lord Louis, the last British Viceroy]; the psychology behind his work was just to finish the job so that he could go home to his next assignment. Not Mahatma Gandhi, who quit the talks in protest. But there is no doubt that, except for Gandhi, the Congress leaders—Jawaharlal Nehru and the others—were as eager as Jinnah to have independence by partition. If one only focuses upon that three months of negotiations resulting in partition it appears that Jinnah's insistence upon a separate Muslim state was overriding. But if you study history with a dispassionate mind you must ask yourself, 'What else could people like Jinnah do?' It was we Hindus who alienated him. He was not the same Jinnah in 1934-35. Because of the Hindus Jinnah from 1935 turned steadily toward the partition solution. I am trying with much difficulty to compress and illuminate this complicated history in three novels."

Today, however, novels have been set aside as GHOSH concentrates on a consuming new interest. In 1979 he discussed starting a new kind of newspaper with Chowdbury, whom he hoped would come back from Hong Kong where he was heading Asian Finance Publications, to edit it; they shared a dissatisfaction with "frivolous, sectarian, provincial and unnecessarily sensational Bengali journalism." The project began to materialize in 1980 when they were offered financing by Abhik Ghosh, a successful manufacturer and international businessman, who had decided that his next venture would be in the media field. "He is an idealist," GHOSH says, "but a businessman and businessmen have an ideology of their own—good business." Abhik Ghosh has said that his goal is to create a network of successful papers.

When Chowdhury decided he could not leave Hong Kong GHOSH accepted the position of editor, with a clear understanding in writing from his backer that he would have absolute editorial freedom. He warned the financier that the paper would be non-conformist. "I told him that he had only two alternatives," GHOSH explains, " 'Either play third fiddle to the other two big newspapers and go the usual way, or come my way and produce a different paper. You have no third alternative. The only chance of survival is to make a new kind of newspaper, a paper with character.' Being a shrewd businessman he saw some future in it, I think, and he agreed."

In India a publications expert may be the publisher of a paper without owning a financial interest. Hence for a publisher who would be a "good manager" GHOSH recommended P. K. Roy who in 1948 had given him the job on Satyayug. Roy resigned as publisher of the English-language Amrita Bazar Patrika (with which he retains a consultant relationship) and joined the new venture.

Ghosh the financier, Roy the publisher and GHOSH the editor, threshed out and agreed upon a modus operandi. The paper, to be called Aajkaal (This Time), would have both a daily and a Sunday edition. Rather than the usual ratio of 35 percent news to 65 percent advertising, they agreed on a ratio of 40 percent advertising to 60 percent news and features. "We calculated that a newspaper can make a profit by keeping this proportion," GHOSH reports. They also agreed that there would be no political or other bias and the paper would not be beholden to the interests of the financier or of advertisers. GHOSH sees the job of the newspaper as twofold: "one is to bring the current world nearer to its readers and the second is to make readers understand the meaning of the news by providing analysis and background. These are the two things that we have set out to do—nothing new."

The first issue of Aajkoal appeared on March 25, 1981 with nearly 80,000 copies; for the Sunday edition two days later 100,000 copies were printed. Circulation settled down to 55,000 per day the following week and has gradually increased to 70,000 daily and 120,000 on Sundays. At the present circulation there is still a considerable gap between cost and revenue, but GHOSH estimates the paper will be self-supporting within 18 months of startup. His intention is not to compete with the daily circulation of the two major papers (400,000 and 300,000 respectively) but to restrict Aajkaal to a daily maximum of 150,000 so that circulation will not be increased at the cost of quality; he hopes to achieve this by the end of 1982. The daily edition has 8 pages and the Sunday edition 12.

Instead of bringing in "choice people from the old type newspapers with fixed thinking," GHOSH decided to mold professional newcomers. He chose a "fresh group of boys and girls with ideas," and trained them for five weeks with the help of two veterans; he himself talked to them on the subject of ideals. The editorial staff is 40 and the entire staff, including janitors, does not exceed 100—a fact that has astonished other Indian publishers.

GHOSH’s approach to news-features is also unusual. Determining to break into new fields he sent an appeal to several important papers outside Bengal suggesting an exchange of stories. The first to respond was the Indian Express in Delhi, whose material Aajkaal is now translating into Bengali. The second largest newspaper in India, Malayala Manorama (in Malayalam) in Kerala, has also joined the exchange. "Instead of being rivals," GHOSH says with delight, "they are cooperators and we can get what is happening in those places from their own mouths." He fervently hopes this idea will grow.

Aajkaal is also carrying stories from district newspapers in West Bengal. The district papers in turn may print any article published in Aajkaal with only a "by courtesy of" acknowledgement. This exchange has generated a keen enthusiasm among frustrated small town editors who are cheered to see their stories in a Calcutta daily. GHOSH plans a seminar with these editors to discuss the exchange and ways to improve their reporting. "I am trying to break new ground so that I can get firsthand all-India news and news from the smallest towns in West Bengal, and at the same time distribute Calcutta news," GHOSH states. "Integration," he adds, "is one of our major headaches in India and Aajkaal is trying to generate the feeling with others that we belong to the same country." Even the government is taking notice, he finds.

GHOSH is gratified that student readership of Aajkaal is growing. His aim is to open windows in young minds. "What pains me most," he says, "is that the people of India, in general, accept things as they are. They say of a new idea, 'It cannot be done.' " Reaching out to his old following, "Goudananda Kavi" appeared in Aajkaal after a long absence from the newsstands; a recent introduction has been the investigative story done by a team instead of an individual.

Some of GHOSH’s close professional friends believe that his circulation goal is unrealistic and that Aajkaal must sell 250,000 copies daily if it is to succeed. Circulation, however, will be limited, they say, as long as the content is like a feature magazine and readers must buy a second paper to get the news. Others observe that GHOSH’s newcomers have not yet become fully professional. A comment GHOSH expected is that some letters and features go too far against age-old tabus. At the same time Aakaal's clean, neat appearance and sharp photo reproductions are prompting other Calcutta newspapers to consider shifting to offset presses, and the exchanges with large non-Bengali and provincial West Bengali newspapers

are winning kudos.

The fire in GHOSH is banked but still glowing. Of medium height and slight build, he walks with a relaxed rolling gait. He wears the usual Bengali garb—open sandals, a white dhoti pulled between his legs and tied up under a kurta (long-sleeved, high-collared long jacket) or shortsleeved panjabi (polo shirt), a worn woven shoulder bag, and on rainy days carries a large, black umbrella hooked over his arm. He again has a crown of curly black hair and retains his mustache. Behind his spectacles his eyes are arresting, expressing his moods—mischievous, penetrating or sorrowful, and listeners quickly perceive beneath his sly wit an earnest, humane man.

GHOSH’s staunch helpmeet has been his wife, Shila Ghosh (from a family with the same surname). She runs an adult education school and did so throughout his difficult years. Their eldest daughter Sahana, age 23, has taken her graduation examination at Calcutta University; Sohini, age 21, is reading in a constituent college of the same university; and their son Bhaskar, age 19, attends the university preparatory school. GHOSH's mother, now 76, lives with them in their three-bedroom government housing apartment.

In 1978 GHOSH received the first Koh Jai Wook Memorial Award, established in honor of a former editor and publisher of Dong A Ilbo in Seoul, Korea, who was a founding trustee of the Press Foundation of Asia (PFA). Awardees are chosen by the PFA and GHOSH’s citation read: "as a crusader for freedom of expression of the individual and the journalist." In 1979 he received the Fuel Instrument Engineering Foundation Award established by Pundit Rao Kulkarni "for his defense of human rights."

"When I write," GHOSH says of himself, "I always think of the ordinary people. A writer must always seek for the truth if he is to be honest to himself and to mankind. Truth was and still is my weapon."

October 1981
Manila

REFERENCES:

Ayyub, Gauri " 'The Naked King' and Gour," The Radical Humanist. Delhi, India. June 1977.

"A Champion of the People and the Press," Hong Kong Standard. July 14, 1978.

A Freedom Fighter (anonymous). Torture of Political Prisoners in India. New Delhi: Printox. N.d.

Ghosh, Gour Kishore. Editorials in Ananda Bazar Patrika. Calcutta. Summaries in English:

"Alas Marx! Alas Lenin!" May 18, 1978.

"Constructive Revolution." December 6, 1976.

"Democracy is Another Word for Liberty." August 15, 1979.

"Dictators Always Enter Through These Holes!" July 16, 1979.

"King Dasharatha and Mao Tse-tung." December 13, 1976.

"Let the Iron Gate Open." February 7, 1977.

"Let Power Descend to the Roots." February 11, 1978.

"Look Before You Leap." December 10, 1978.

"Man is the Measure." October 12, 1977.

"Pro-Chinese Marxists, India and Democracy."

August 15, 1978. "Southeast Asia in the Eyes of a Recent Visitor from India." August 30, 1978.

"Which Road is to be Adopted by the Marxist Government of West Bengal?" June 23, 1977.

"Who is an Enemy in a Democracy?" October 28, 1978.

______. Hing Ting Chhat. A collection of columns from Ananda Bazar Patrika under the pen name Goudananda Kavi. Translations of excerpts. Calcutta 1973.

______. "The Journalist's Obligation to Himself and Society." Presentation made to Group Discussion, Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 3, 1981. (Typewritten transcript.)

______. Let Me Have My Say. (Translation by Sushil Bhadra and Sitangshu Deb Chatterjee of a satirical poem, the preface and 17 excerpts from Amake Bolte Dao.) Calcutta: Ananda Publishers. 1977.

______. Rupadarshir Sangbad Bhashya. Collection of columns from Desh. Calcutta. 1978. Translations:

"Our Father's Sons." May 16, 1970.

''Festival for the Progressive." October 9, 1971.

"From Uncle Russiski with Love." October 23, 1971.

"Indira Auto-Voter." March 25, 1972.

"An Exclusive Interview." August 28, 1971.

"A Rare 'Bengal Tiger,' " Asiaweek. October 16, 1981, p. 55-56.

Interview with Gour Kishore Ghosh and letters from and interviews with persons acquainted with him, his life and his work.

(The Foundation is indebted to Barun Roy for the translations and summaries of editorials and columns cited above.)