Newshub18:The name of the bridge in Jamalpur is Harekrishna Kongard Bridge! But who this person?
Probably 1967, or the year after that. Head of National Agricultural Commodity Price Commission, Office at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi. Ishath feels awkward in the government environment, but there are also several benefits. Traveling across the countryside, learning about the agrarian system in different regions, the extent to which the poor and landless peasants are exploited and in what strange ways, I gain first-hand experience of the growing influence of the kulaks in the irrigated states. Winter season, Australian cricket team has come to play in India, on the last day of the test match held in Delhi, I could not control the greed and left the office around noon to watch the game.
Returning to the office in the late afternoon, I heard that Harekrishna Kongar came to meet me, waited for an hour and went back. I have rarely felt so ashamed in my life. Not only shame, but also self-deprecation! After six months of traveling around the country, whatever ideas I could master about the national agricultural problem, he used to explain it to Harekrishna Babu in half an hour’s conversation. The details of land problems in every corner of India and the source of the problems are at his fingertips. Having spent most of his time in his home state, he has limited opportunities to communicate in any language other than his mother tongue. However, if necessary, he could easily present a simple speech even in an unfamiliar language with the heavy ministers and bureaucrats of New Delhi. Despite their disagreements with his decisions, Hare Krishna never wavered in his reverent admiration for Konga.
With the exception of Latin America, the leftists in the whole world are in deep trouble at the moment, even in our country, and in our state they have been in charge of the administration for more than three decades. So it is natural that this year, the birth centenary of Hare Krishna Congar (1915-1974), there is no fuss at all. (More recently, the news about the death of Anuj and his fellow soldier Vinay Kongar got little mention in the newspaper.) He was born in a Bardhishnu Agrakshatriya family in the rural areas of Bardwan district. In the early decades of the last century, with the flood of patriotism sweeping the country, even the young Hare Krishnas were swept away, joining the armed revolutionary movement almost inevitably. Then arrested, tried, punished, imprisoned in the Andaman Cellular Jail, initiated into Marxism while in prison, returned to his district after release as a staunch Communist Party worker. Amazing organizational talent, synthesis of general knowledge with profound theoretical knowledge, mixing of humility and cordiality with people from different walks of life, humility to listen patiently to criticism spread his fame quickly. Within a few years, Harekrishna Kongar took over the leadership of the peasant movement that was gradually consolidating across the country, becoming the secretary of the Sara Bharat Kisan Sabha.
Irony of history, the party which gave land to the landless led by leaders like Harekrishna Kongar, is only a few decades old due to the incompetence of the next generation.
The face of the procession. Harekrishna Kongar (front left), Jyoti Basu (just behind Harekrishnababu) and fellow travelers.
Probably 1967, or the year after that. Head of National Agricultural Commodity Price Commission, Office at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi. Ishath feels awkward in the government environment, but there are also several benefits. Traveling across the countryside, learning about the agrarian system in different regions, the extent to which the poor and landless peasants are exploited and in what strange ways, I gain first-hand experience of the growing influence of the kulaks in the irrigated states. Winter season, Australian cricket team has come to play in India, on the last day of the test match held in Delhi, I could not control the greed and left the office around noon to watch the game.
Returning to the office in the late afternoon, I heard that Harekrishna Kongar came to meet me, waited for an hour and went back. I have rarely felt so ashamed in my life. Not only shame, but also self-deprecation! After six months of traveling around the country, whatever ideas I could master about the national agricultural problem, he used to explain it to Harekrishna Babu in half an hour’s conversation. The details of land problems in every corner of India and the source of the problems are at his fingertips. Having spent most of his time in his home state, he has limited opportunities to communicate in any language other than his mother tongue. However, if necessary, he could easily present a simple speech even in an unfamiliar language with the heavy ministers and bureaucrats of New Delhi. Despite their disagreements with his decisions, Hare Krishna never wavered in his reverent admiration for Konga.
With the exception of Latin America, the leftists in the whole world are in deep trouble at the moment, even in our country, and in our state they have been in charge of the administration for more than three decades. So it is natural that this year, the birth centenary of Hare Krishna Congar (1915-1974), there is no fuss at all. (More recently, the news about the death of Anuj and his fellow soldier Vinay Kongar got little mention in the newspaper.) He was born in a Bardhishnu Agrakshatriya family in the rural areas of Bardwan district. In the early decades of the last century, with the flood of patriotism sweeping the country, even the young Hare Krishnas were swept away, joining the armed revolutionary movement almost inevitably. Then arrested, tried, punished, imprisoned in the Andaman Cellular Jail, initiated into Marxism while in prison, returned to his district after release as a staunch Communist Party worker. Amazing organizational talent, synthesis of general knowledge with profound theoretical knowledge, mixing of humility and cordiality with people from different walks of life, humility to listen patiently to criticism spread his fame quickly. Within a few years, Harekrishna Kongar took over the leadership of the peasant movement that was gradually consolidating across the country, becoming the secretary of the Sara Bharat Kisan Sabha.
Not everyone has the talent to express their thoughts with ease and fluency in any environment. In the post-independence chapter, when the Left movement was increasingly organized in various regions of the country, among its leaders, perhaps the leaders of Kerala were foremost in ubiquity. Namboodiripad-Gopalan and several others could become soul mates by interacting with toiling agricultural labourers, engaging in detailed discussions about their problems with factory workers, stopping cars on the streets and engaging in homely chats at simple tea stalls, and with the highest officials of the administration in the capitalHe could also display incredible skill in rhetoric.I remember, with the first general election, the Congress party’s single influence in the Lok Sabha, the Communist Party being the largest opposition force with a total of twenty-five MPs, Jawaharlal Nehru, in a slightly sarcastic tone, threw a sentence at the Leftists: ‘You are revolutionaries, don’t believe in parliamentary democracy, then here it is. Why did you come?Immediately Gopalan, the peasant-labourer’s meth leader, responded with a firm reply, ‘To destroy your parliamentary system from within!’
etc. totalitarianism was but rare among the left-wing leaders of Bengal. Pramod Dasgupta’s silent organization talent is almost unmatched. From time to time he has been responsible for publishing the party newspaper, he has shouldered the burden of maintaining constant communication with each district organization from the state office, he was not seen traveling from district to district, yet he had one amazing skill – always keeping his head down in such and such village in such and such sub-division of such and such district. Party workerPramod Dasgupta knows the details of daily life.Because of this talent he was the undisputed leader of the party organization, very close to the party members, yet reluctant to go outside the state despite his disinterest in public meetings, being a very powerful member of the highest policy-making body of the national organization.
Jyoti Basu is a completely different personality. Leaving behind the memories of his childhood-adolescence-early youth spent in the safe enclosure of comfort, joining the railway workers’ movement and wandering about, gathering the strength to bear hardships, learning to speak in Mitbak’s Bengali and broken Hindi, entering the Legislative Assembly as a labor representative, then his incredible unveiling— In the assemblyOnly three members of the entire party, reduced to two after partition, could speak English, so he was probably chosen as the leader. He alone is like the sole protector of thousands of miserable people. The urban middle-lower-middle classes were enthralled by his choppy speech. But wherever there was a barrier, he kept his distance, which he himself probably preferred. Especially when he went to work for the party in the countryside, he won the awe-inspiring respect of the villagers, Jyoti Bose as their leader, their guide, yet looking up at him like a distant star-gazing gaze. Over time, Jyoti Basu became the party’s all-India leader, his reputation as a stable politician long before he entered the state administration. Pramod Dasgupta and Jyoti Basu, though steadfast in party ideology, did not involve themselves in theory (but there was a slight difference between the two: for entertainment, Pramod Babu preferred to read a book on philosophy or theory, Jyoti Babu a light mystery story.).
Harekrishna Kongar had read a lot of theoretical books while imprisoned in the Andamans, but after being freed, he jumped into the peasant movement in undivided Bengal and took full advantage of the theory from the point of view of experience and analysis. The anger and anguish of the endangered sharecroppers, small land owners and landless destitute peasants are the main tools of struggle for him. He turned their minds into an irresistible political demand: a class of zamindar-jotdars held anonymous possession of much land outside the legal upper limits — let the police come, let the gangsters of the zamindar-jotdars come, the allied peasants would defend their right to the occupied land with bloodshed. He made it clear that the bargadars should end their occasional evictions, the sharecroppers should be given legal rights to their cultivated land and it would be hereditary, the minimum wages of farm laborers should be stamped with the law. Harekrishna Babu, the forefather of this movement, is traveling from village to village, the common people are seeing their dreams being spoken by his voice, the house-to-house cries of fear and tears of the wealthy landowners.
The impetus this movement gave to the exploited peasantry was one of the main sources of leftist political empowerment in West Bengal in the middle decades of the last century. Along with Pramod Dasgupta and Jyoti Basu as the leader of that violent movement, the names of Harekrishna Kongar are equally relevant. He himself could not see the perfection of the movement inspired by him. A few years after his death, the Left Front legislated his dream in the first phase of forming a government in the state. A strange irony of history, the party which under his leadership and management had given land to the landless in villages, due to the incompetence and indiscretion of the party leadership of the next generation, after only a few decades, the land of the poor was accused of giving it to the big people. I do have one regret. The peasants, the poor farmers became the owners of one or two patches of land, but what after that? There is no way to know what Harekrishna Babu thought about the magic of co-operative movement to share the ownership of the newly acquired land with each other.
I started with a personal context, and ended with a similar story. Last week of June 1975. Indira Gandhi declared emergency, thundering misrule everywhere. News came, Wolf Ladzynski passed away. Agricultural Commodity Price Commission But can the history that Harekrishna Kongar believed in, which he sacrificed his life to accelerate, be abolished so easily? But the current generation does not know much about this historical person. There is no evidence except a bridge named after him in Jamalpur block